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PAUL FABER, SURGEON 




PAUL FABER 





PAUL FABER 


SURGEON 


BY 

GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF ‘‘ROBERT FALCONER,” “ DAVID ELGIN BROD,” 
“WILFRID CUMBERMEDE,” “ ST. GEORGE AND 
ST. MICHAEL,” ETC., ETC. 


* * 41 4 t * 


a faith sincere 


Drawn from the wisdom that begins with fear, 

Wordsworth. — Second Evening Voluntary, 



PHILADELPHIA: 

DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER, 

610 SOUTH WASHINGTON SQUARE. 





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TO 

W. C. T. 


TUUM EST. 

Clear-windowed temple of the God of grace, 

From the loud wind to me a hiding-place ! 

Thee gird broad lands with genial motions rite. 

But in thee dwells, high-throned, the Life of life! 
Thy test no stagnant moat half-filled with mud, 
But living waters witnessing in flood ! 

Thy priestess, beauty-clad, and gospel-shod, 

A fi IL'w laborer in the earth with God 1 
t ‘ood will art thou, and gooc n :s i a .1 thy irts — 
Doves to their windows, and to thee fly hearts I 
Take of the corn in thy dear shelter grown. 

Which else the storm had all too rudely blown ; 
When to a higher temple thou shalt mount. 

Thy earthly gifts in heavenly friends shall count ; 
Let these first-fruits enter thy lofty door, 

And golden lie upon thy golden floor. 

G. M. £k 


Porto Fino, December^ 1878, 



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CONTENTS. 


CHAP. 

I. THE LANE 

II. THE minister’s DOOR 

III. THE MANOR HOUSE . 

IV. THE RECTORY . 

V. THE ROAD TO OWLKIRK . 

VI. THE COTTAGE , . , 

VII. THE PULPIT , 

VIII. THE MANOR HOUSE DINING«ROOM 

IX. THE RECTORY DRAWING-ROOM 

X. MR. drake’s arbor 

XI. THE CHAMBER AT THE COTTAGE 

XII. THE minister’s GARDEN 

XIII. THE HEATH AT NESTLEY 

XIV. THE GARDEN AT OWLKIRK . 

XV. THE PARLOR AT OWLKIRK . 

XVI. THE BUTCHER’S SHOP 

XVII. THE PARLOR AGAIN . 

XVIII. THE PARK AT NESTLEY 

XIX. THE RECTORY . . . 

XX. AT THE PIANO . • 

XXI. THE pastor’s STUDY . 

XXII. TWO MINDS . . • 

XXIII. THE MINISTER’S BEDROOM , 


PAGB 

• 1 

• 7 

. *4 
. z8 
. 21 
. 24 
. 28 
. 36 
. 39 

• 44 
. 54 

. 58 

• 61 

• 70 

• 77 

. 87 

. 93 
. 108 
. 114 

• 118 
. Z24 
. *34 

. 139 

• * 1 ? 


XXIV. JULIET’S CHAMBER 


vm 


CONTENTS, 


CHAP. 

XXV. OSTERFIELD PARK , , • 

XXVI. THE SURGERY DOOR 
XXVII. THE GROANS OF THE INARTICULATE 
XXVIII. COW-LANE CHAPEL 
XXIX. THE doctor’s HOUSE 
• XXX. THE PONY-CARRIAGE • 

XXXI. A CONSCIENCE 
XXXII. THE OLD HOUSE AT GLASTON 
XXXIII. PAUL FABER’S DRESSING-ROOM 
XXXIV. THE BOTTOMLESS POOL 
XXXV. A HEART 
XXXVI. TWO MORE MINDS , 

XXXVII. THE doctor’s STUDY 
XXXVIII. THE MIND OF JULIET 
XXXIX. ANOTHER MIND 
XL. A DESOLATION 
: XLI. THE OLD GARDEN . , 

■ XLII. THE POTTERY 

XLIII. THE GATE-LODGE . , 

XLIV. THE CORNER OF THE BUTCHER’S SHOP 
XLV. HERE AND THERE . , 

XLVI. THE minister’s STUDY , 

' XLVII. THE BLOWING OF THE WIND 
XLVIII. THE BORDER-LAND , 

XLIX. EMPTY HOUSES 

L. FALLOW FIELDS , , 

LI. THE NEW OLD HOUSE 
LI I. THE LEVEL OF THE LYTHE 
LIII. MY LADY’S CHAMBER 
LIV. NOWHERE AND EVERYWHERE 


PAGE 

. 157 

• 165 

. 171 

. 182 

. 194 
, 200 
. 214 
. 225 
. 233 

. 24s 

• 249 
. 255 
. 265 
. 272 
, 281 
. 286 
. 295 

. 304 
. 314 
. 323 

. 327 
. 332 
. 340 
. 348 

. 354 
. 362 

. 373 

• 379 

. 383 
. 392 


PAUL FABER. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE LANE. 

The rector sat on the box of his carriage, driving his 
horses toward his church, the grand old abbey-church of 
Glaston. His wife was inside, and an old woman — he had 
stopped on the road to take her up — sat with her basket on 
the foot-board behind. His coachman sat beside him ; he 
never took the reins when his master was there. Mr. Bevis 
drove like a gentleman, in an easy, informal, yet thoroughly 
business-like way. His horses were black — large, well-bred, 
and well-fed, but neither young nor showy, and the harness 
was just the least bit shabby. Indeed, the entire turnout, 
including his own hat and the coachman’s, offered the 
beholder that aspect of indifference to show, which, by the 
suggestion of a nodding acquaintance with poverty, gave it 
the right clerical air of being not of this world. Mrs. Bevis 
had her basket on the seat before her, containing, beneath 
an upper stratum of flowers, some of the first rhubarb of the 
season and a pound or two of fresh butter for a poor relation 
in the town. 

The rector was a man about sixty, with keen gray eyes, 
a good-humored mouth, a nose whose enlargement had not 
of late gone in the direction of its original design, and 
a face more than inclining to the rubicund, suggestive of 
good living as well as open air. Altogether he had the look 
of a man who knew what he was about, and was on tolerable 
terms with himself, and on still better with his neighbor. 
The heart under his ribs was larger even than indicated by 
the benevolence of his countenance and the humor hovering 
over his mouth. Upon the countenance of his wife rested a 
placidity sinking almost into fatuity. Its features were 
rather indications than completions, but there was a con- 


2 


PAUL FABER. 


sciousness of comfort about the mouth, and the eyes were 
alive. 

They were passing at a good speed through a varying 
country — now a thicket of hazel, now great patches of furze 
upon open common, and anon well-kept farm-hedges, and 
clumps of pine, the remnants of ancient forest, when, half- 
way through a lane so narrow that the rector felt every yard 
toward the other end a gain, his horses started, threw up 
their heads, and looked for a moment wild as youth. Just 
in front of them, in the air, over a high hedge, scarce touch- 
ing the topmost twigs with his hoofs, appeared a great red 
horse. Down he came into the road, bringing with him a 
rather tall, certainly handsome, and even at first sight, at- 
tractive rider. A dark brown mustache upon a somewhat 
smooth sunburned face, and a stern settling of the strong yet 
delicately finished features gave him a military look ; but 
the sparkle of his blue eyes contradicted his otherwise cold 
expression. He drew up close to the hedge to make room 
for the carriage, but as he neared him Mr. Bevis slackened 
his speed, and during the following talk they were moving 
gently along with just room for the rider to keep clear of the 
off fore wheel. 

‘‘Heigh, Faber,” said the cler^man, “you’ll break your 
neck some day ! You should think of your patients, man. 
That wasn’t a jump for any man in his senses to take.” 

“ It is but fair to give my patients a chance now and 
then,” returned the surgeon, who never met the rector but 
there was a merry passage between them. 

“ Upon my word,” said Mr. Bevis, “when you came over 
the hedge there, I took you for Death in the Revelations, 
that had tired out his own and changed horses with t’other 
one.” 

As he spoke, he glanced back with a queer look, for he 
found himself guilty of a little irreverence, and his con- 
science sat behind him in the person of his wife. But that 
conscience was a very easy one, being almost as incapable 
of seeing a joke as of refusing a request. 

“ — How many have you bagged this week ? ” concluded 
the rector. 

“ I haven’t counted up yet,” answered the surgeon. 
y<?z^’ve got one behind, I see,” he added, signing with 
his whip over his shoulder. 

“ Poor old thing ! ” said the rector, as if excusing himself, 
“ she’s got a heavy basket, and we all need a lift sometimes 


PAUL FABER. 


3 


^eh, doctor ? — into the world and out again, at all 
events.” 

There was more of the reflective in this utterance than the 
parson was in the habit of displaying ; but he liked the 
doctor, and, although as well as every one else he knew him 
to be no friend to the church, or to Christianity, or even to 
religious belief of any sort, his liking, coupled with a vague 
sense of duty, had urged him to this most unassuming at- 
tempt to cast the friendly arm of faith around the unbeliever. 

“ I plead guilty to the former,” answered Faber, but 
somehow I have never practiced the euthanasia. The in- 
stincts of my profession, I suppose are against it. Besides, 
that ought to be your business.” 

“ Not altogether,” said the rector, with a kindly look from 
his box, which, however, only fell on the top of the doctor’s 
hat. 

Faber seemed to feel the influence of it notwithstanding, 
for he returned, 

“ If all clergymen were as liberal as you, Mr. Bevis, there 
would be more danger of some of us giving in.” 

The word liberal seemed to rouse the rector to the fact 
that his coachman sat on the box, yet another conscience, 
beside him. Sub divo one must not be too liberal. There 
was a freedom that came out better over a bottle of wine 
than over the backs of horses. With a word he quickened 
the pace of his cleric steeds, and the doctor was dropped 
parallel with the carriage window. There, catching sight of 
Mrs. Bevis, of whose possible presence he had not thought 
once, he paid his compliments, and made his apologies, then 
trotted his gaunt Ruber again beside the wheel, and resumed 
talk, but not the same talk, with the rector. For a few min- 
utes it turned upon the state of this and that ailing parish- 
ioner ; for, while the rector left all the duties of public service 
to his curate, he ministered to the ailing and poor upon and 
immediately around his own little property, which was in 
that, corner of his parish furthest from the town ; but ere 
long, as all talk was sure to do between the parson and any 
body who owned but a donkey, it veered round in a certain 
direction. 

“ You don’t seem to feed that horse of yours upon beans, 
Faber,” he said. 

“ I don’t seem, I grant,” returned the doctor ; “but you 
should see him feed ! He eats enough for two, but he can't 
make fat : all goes to muscle and pluck.” 


4 


PAUL FABER. 


“ Well, I must allow the less fat he has to carry the better, 
if you’re in the way of heaving him over such hedges on to 
the hard road. In my best days I should never have faced 
a jump like that in cold blood,” said the rector. 

“ I’ve got no little belongings of wife or child to make a 
prudent man of me, you see,” returned the surgeon. “ At 
worst it’s but a knock on the head and a longish snooze.” 

The rector fancied he felt his wife’s shudder shake the 
carriage, but the sensation was of his own producing. The 
careless defiant words wrought in him an unaccountable 
kind of terror : it seemed almost as if they had rushed of 
themselves from his own lips. 

“ Take care, my dear sir,” he said solemnly. There 
may be something to believe^ though you don’t believe it.” 

“ I must take the chance,” replied Faber. “ I will do my 
best to make calamity of long life, by keeping the rheumatic 
and epileptic and phthisical alive, while I know how. Where 
nothing can be known, I prefer not to intrude.” 

A pause followed. At length said the rector, 

“ You are so good a fellow, Faber, I wish you were better. 
When will you come and dine with me ? ” 

“ Soon, I hope,” answered the surgeon, “ but I am too 
busy at present. For all her sweet ways and looks, the 
spring is not friendly to man, and my work is to wage war 
with nature.” 

A second pause followed. The rector would gladly have 
said something, but nothing would come. 

“ By the by,” he said at length, “ I thought I saw you 
pass the gate — let me see — on Monday : why did you not 
look in ? ” 

“ I hadn’t a moment’s time. I was sent for to a patient 
in the village.” 

“ Yes, I know ; I heard of that. I wish you would give 
me your impression of the lady. She is a stranger here. — 
John, that gate is swinging across the road. Get down and 
shut it. — Who and what is she ? ” 

“ That I should be glad to learn from you. All I know 
is that she is a lady. There can not be two opinions as to 
that.” 

They’tell me she is a beauty,” said the parson. 

The doctor nodded his head emphatically. 

“ Haven’t you seen her ? ” he said. 

Scarcely — only her back. She walks well. Do you 
know nothing about her ? Who has she with her ? 


PAUL FABER. 


5 


“ Nobody.’* 

“ Then Mrs. Bevis shall call upon her.” 

“ I think at present she had better not, Mrs. Puckridge 
is a good old soul, and pays her every attention.” 

“ What is the matter with her ? Nothing infectious ? ” 

“ Oh, no ! She has caught a chill. I was afraid of 
pneumonia yesterday,” 

“ Then she is better ? ” 

I confess I am a little anxious about her. But I ought 
not to be dawdling like this, with half my patients to see. 
I must bid you good morning. — Good morning, Mrs. Bevis.” 

As he spoke, Faber drew rein, and let the carriage pass ; 
then turned his horse’s head to the other side of the way, 
scrambled up the steep bank to the field above, and galloped 
toward Glaston, whose great church rose high in sight. 
Over hedge and ditch he rode straight for its tower. 

“ The young fool ! ” said the rector, looking after him 
admiringly, and pulling up his horses that he might more 
conveniently see him ride. 

“ Jolly old fellow ! ” said the surgeon at his second jump. 

I wonder how much he believes now of all the rot ! 
Enough to humbug himself with — not a hair more. He has 
no passion for humbugging other people. There’s that 
curate of his now believes every thing, and would humbug 
the whole world if he could ! How any man can come to 
fool himself so thoroughly as that man does, is a mystery to 
me ! — I wonder what the rector’s driving into Glaston for 
on a Saturday.” 

Paul Faber was a man who had espoused the cause of 
science with all the energy of a suppressed poetic nature. 
He had such a horror of all kinds of intellectual deception 
or mistake, that he would rather run the risk of rejecting 
any number of truths than of accepting one error. In this 
spirit he had concluded that, as no immediate communica- 
tion had ever reached his eye, or ear, or hand from any 
creator of men, he had no ground for believing in the exist- 
ence of such a creator ; while a thousand unfitnesses 
evident in the world, rendered the existence of one perfectly 
wise and good and powerful, absolutely impossible. If one 
said to him that he believed thousands of things he had 
never himself known, he answered he did so upon testimony. 
If one rejoined that here too we have te.stimony, he replied 
it was not credible testimony, but founded on such expe- 
riences as he was justified in considering imaginary, seeing 


6 


PAUL FABER. 


they were like none he had ever had himself. When he was 
asked whether, while he yet believed there was such a being 
as his mother told him of, he had ever set himself to act 
upon that belief, he asserted himself fortunate in the omis- 
sion of what might have riveted on him the fetters of a degrad- 
ing faith. For years he had turned his face toward all 
speculation favoring the non-existence of a creating Will, 
his back toward all tending to show that such a one might 
be. Argument on the latter side he set down as born of 
prejudice, and appealing to weakness ; on the other, as 
springing from courage, and appealing to honesty. He had 
never put it to himself which would be the worse deception 
— to believe there was a God when there was none ; or to 
believe there was no God when there was one. 

He had, however, a large share of the lower but equally 
indispensable half of religion — that, namely, which has 
respect to one’s fellows. Not a man in Glaston was readier, 
by day or by night, to run to the help of another, and that 
not merely in his professional capacity, but as a neighbor, 
whatever the sort of help was needed. 

Thomas Wingfold, the curate, had a great respect for him. 
Having himself passed through many phases of serious, and 
therefore painful doubt, he was not as much shocked by the 
surgeon’s unbelief as some whose real faith was even less 
than Faber’s ; but he seldom laid himself out to answer his 
objections. He sought rather, but as yet apparently in 
vain, to cause the roots of those very objections to strike 
into, and thus disclose to the man himself, the deeper strata 
of his being. This might indeed at first only render him 
the more earnest in his denials, but at length it would 
probably rouse in him that spiritual nature to which alone 
such questions really belong, and which alone is capable of 
coping with them. The first notable result, however, of the 
surgeon’s intercourse with the curate was, that, whereas he 
had till then kept his opinions to himself in the presence of 
those who did not sympathize with them, he now uttered 
his disbelief with such plainness as I have shown him using 
toward the rector. This did not come of aggravated 
antagonism, but of admiration of the curate’s openness in 
the presentment of truths which must be unacceptable to the 
majority of his congregation. 

There had arisen therefore betwixt the doctor and the 
curate a certain sort of intimacy, which had at length come 
to the rector’s ears. He had. no doubt, before this heard 


PAUL FABER. 


7 


many complaints against the latter, but he had laughed 
them aside. No* theologian himself, he had found the 
questions hitherto raised in respect of Wingfold’s teaching, 
altogether beyond the pale of his interest. He could not 
comprehend why people should not content themselves 
with being good Christians, minding their own affairs, going 
to church, and so feeling safe for the next world. What did 
opinion matter as long as they were good Christians ? He 
did not exactly know what he believed himself, but he hoped 
he was none the less of a Christian for that ! Was it not 
enough to hold fast whatever lay in the apostles’, the Nicene, 
and the Athanasian creed, without splitting metaphysical 
hairs with your neighbor? But was it decent that his 
curate should be hand and glove with one who denied 
the existence of God ? He did not for a moment doubt the 
faith of Wingfold ; but a man must have some respect for 
appearances : appearances were facts as well as realities 
were facts. An honest man must not keep company with a 
thief, if he would escape the judgment of being of thievish 
kind. Something must be done ; probably something said 
would be enough, and the rector was now on his way to 
say it. 


CHAPTER II. 
the minister’s door. 

Every body knew Mr. Faber, whether he rode Ruber or 
Niger — Rubber and Nigger, his groom called them — and 
many were the greetings that met him as he passed along 
Pine Street, for, despite the brand of his atheism, he was 
popular. The few ladies out shopping bowed graciously, 
for both his manners and person were pleasing, and his 
professional attentions were unexceptionable. When he 
dropped into a quick walk, to let Ruber cool a little ere he 
reached his stall, he was several times accosted and detained. 
The last who addressed him was Mr. Drew, the principal 
draper of the town. He had been standing for some time 
in his shop-door, but as Faber was about to turn the corner, 
he stepped out on the pavement, and the doctor checked his 
horse in the gutter. 


8 


PAUL FABER. 


‘‘ I wish you would look in upon Mr. Drake, sir,” he said. 
“ I am quite uneasy about him. Indeed I am sure he must 
be in a bad way, though he won't allow it. He’s not an 
easy man to do any thing for, but just you let me know what 
can be done for him — and we'll contrive. A nod^ you know, 
doctor, etc.” 

“ I don’t well see how I can,” returned Faber. To call 
now without being sent for, when I never called before ! — 
No, Mr. Drew, I don't think I could.” 

It was a lovely spring noon. The rain that had fallen 
heavily during the night lay in flashing pools that filled the 
street with suns. Here and there were little gardens before 
the houses, and the bushes in them were hung with bright 
drops, so bright that the rain seemed to have fallen from 
the sun himself, not from the clouds. 

“ Why, goodness gracious ! ” cried the draper, ‘‘ here’s 
your excuse come direct ! ” 

Under the very nose of the doctor’s great horse stood a 
little woman-child, staring straight up at the huge red head 
above her. Now Ruber was not quite gentle, and it was 
with some dismay that his master, although the animal 
showed no offense at the glowering little thing, pulled him 
back a step or two with the curb, the thought darting through 
him how easily with one pash of his mighty hoof the horse 
could annihilate a mirrored universe. 

“ Where from ? ” he asked, by what he would himself 
have called a half-conscious cerebration. 

“ From somewhere they say you don’t believe in, doctor," 
answered the draper. “ It’s little Amanda, the minister’s 
own darling — Naughty little dear ! ” he continued, his 
round good-humored face wrinkled all over with smiles, as 
he caught up the truant, “ what ever do you mean by splash- 
ing through every gutter between home and here, making a 
little drab of yourself ? Why your frock is as wet as a 
dish-clout ! — and your shoes ! My gracious ! ” 

The little one answered only by patting his cheeks, which 
in shape much resembled her own, with her little fat puds, 
as if she had been beating a drum, while Faber looked 
down amused and interested. 

“ Here, doctor ! ’’ the draper went on, “ you take the 
little mischief on the saddle before you, and carry her home : 
that will be your excuse.’’ 

As he spoke he held up the child to him. Faber took 
her, and sitting as far back in the saddle as he couM, set 


PAUL FABER. 


9 


her upon the pommel She screwed up her eyes, and 
grinned with delight, spreading her mouth wide, and show- 
ing an incredible number of daintiest little teeth. When 
Ruber began to move she shrieked in her ecstasy. 

Holding his horse to a walk, the doctor crossed the main 
street and went down a side one toward the river, whence 
again he entered a narrow lane. There with the handle of 
his whip he managed to ring the door-bell of a little old- 
fashioned house which rose immediately from the lane with- 
out even a footpath between. The door was opened by a 
lady-like young woman, with smooth soft brown hair, a white 
forehead, and serious, rather troubled eyes. 

“Aunty ! aunty ! " cried the child, “ Ducky 'iding ! ” 

Miss Drake looked a little surprised. The doctor lifted 
his hat. She gravely returned his greeting and stretched 
up her arms to take the child. But she drew back, nestling 
against Faber. 

“ Amanda ! come, dear,” said Miss Drake. “ How kind 
of Dr. Faber to bring you home ! I’m afraid you’ve been a 
naughty child again — running out into the street.” 

“ Such a g’eat ’ide ! ” cried Amanda, heedless of reproof. 
“ A yeal ’ossy — big ! big ! ” 

She spread her arms wide, in indication of the vastness of 
the upbearing body whereon she sat. But still she leaned 
back against the doctor, and he awaited the result in 
amused silence. Again her aunt raised her hands to take 
her. 

“ Mo’ ’yide ! ” cried the child, looking up backward, to 
find Faber’s eyes. 

But her aunt caught her by the feet, and amid struggling 
and laughter drew her down, and held her in her arms. 

“ I hope your father is pretty well. Miss Drake,” said the 
doctor, wasting no time in needless explanation. 

“ Ducky,” said the girl, setting down the child, “go and 
tell grandpapa how kind Dr. Faber has been to you. Tell 
him he is at the door.” Then turning to Faber, “ I am 
sorry to say he does not seem at all well,” she answered 
him. “ He has had a good deal of annoyance lately, and 
at his age that sort of thing tells.” 

As she spoke she looked up at the doctor, full in his face, 
but with a curious quaver in her eyes. Nor was it any 
wonder she should look at him strangely, for she felt 
toward him very strangely : to her he was as it were the 
apostle of a kakangel, the prophet of a doctrine that was 


lO 


PAUL FABER. 


evil, yet perhaps was a truth. Terrible doubts had for some 
time been assailing her — doubts which she could in part 
trace to him, and as he sat there on Ruber, he looked like a 
beautiful evil angel, who knew there was no God — an evil 
angel whom the curate, by his bold speech, had raised, and 
could not banish. 

The surgeon had scarcely begun a reply, when the old 
minister made his appearance. He was a tall, well-built 
man, with strong features, rather handsome than otherwise ; 
but his hat hung on his occiput, gave his head a look of 
weakness and oddity that by nature did not belong to it, 
while baggy, ill-made clothes and big shoes manifested a re- 
action from the over-trimness of earlier years. He greeted 
the doctor with a severe smile. 

“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Faber,” he said, for 
bringing me home my little runaway. Where did you find 
her?” 

“Under my horse’s head, like the temple between the 
paws of the Sphinx,” answered Faber, speaking a parable 
without knowing it. 

“ She is a fearless little damsel,” said the minister, in a 
husky voice that had once rung clear as a bell over crowded 
congregations — “ too fearless at times. But the very ignor- 
ance of danger seems the panoply of childhood. And in- 
deed who knows in the midst of what evils we all walk that 
never touch us ! ” 

“ A Solon of platitudes ! ” said the doctor to himself. 

“ She has been in the river once, and almost twice,” Mr. 
Drake went on. “ — I shall have to tie you with a string, 
pussie ! Come away from the horse. What if he should 
take to stroking you ? lam afraid you would find his hands 
both hard and heavy.” 

“ How do you stand this trying spring weather, Mr. 
Drake ? I don’t hear the best accounts of you,” said the 
surgeon, drawing Ruber a pace back from the door. 

“ I am as well as at my age I can perhaps expect to be,” 
answered the minister. “ I am getting old — and — and — 
we all have our troubles, and, I trust, our God also, to set 
them right for us,” he added, with a suggesting look in the 
face of the doctor. 

“By Jove ! ” said Faber to himself, “the spring weather 
has roused the worshiping instinct ! The clergy are 
awake to-day ! I had better look out, or it will soon be too 
hot for me.” 


PAUL FABER. 


II 


“ I can’t look you in the face, doctor,” resumed the old 
man after a pause, “ and believe what people say of you. 
It can’t be that you don’t even believe there is a God ? ” 

Faber would rather have said nothing; but his integrity 
he must keep fast hold of, or perish in his own esteem. 

“ If there be one,” he replied, “ I only state a fact when 
I say He has never given me ground sufficient to think so. 
You say yourselves He has favorites to whom He reveals 
Himself : I am not one of them, and must therefore of ne- 
cessity be an unbeliever.” 

“ But think, Mr. Faber — if there should be a God, what 
an insult it is to deny Him existence.” 

“ I can’t see it,” returned the surgeon, suppressing a 
laugh. “ If there be such a one, would He not have me 
speak the truth ? Anyhow, what great matter can it be to 
Him that one should say he has never seen Him, and can’t 
therefore believe He is to be seen ? A god should be above 
that sort of pride.” 

The minister was too much shocked to find any answer 
beyond a sad reproving shake of the head. But he felt 
almost as if the hearing of such irreverence without wither- 
ing retort, made him a party to the sin against the Holy 
Ghost. Was he not now conferring with one of the gen- 
erals of the army of Antichrist ? Ought he not to turn his 
back upon him, and walk into the house ? But a surge of 
concern for the frank young fellow who sat so strong and 
alive upon the great horse, broke over his heart, and he 
looked up at him pitifully. 

Faber mistook the cause and object of his evident 
emotion. 

“ Come now, Mr. Drake, be frank with me,” he said. 
“You are out of health ; let me know what is the matter. 
Though I’m not religious, I’m not a humbug, and only speak 
the truth when I say I should be glad to serve you. A man 
must be neighborly, or what is there left of him ? Even 
you will allow that our duty to our neighbor is half the law, 
and there is some help in medicine, though I confess it is 
no science yet, and we are but dabblers.” 

“ But,” said Mr. Drake, “ I don’t choose to accept the 
help of one who looks upon all who think with me as a set 
of humbugs, and regards those who deny every thing as the 
only honest men.” 

“ By Jove ! sir, I take you for an honest man, or I 
should never trouble my head about you. What I say 


12 


PAUL FABER. 


of such as you is, that, having inherited a lot of humbug, 
you don’t know it for such, and do the best you can with 
it.” 

If such is your opinion of me — and I have no right to 
complain of it in my own person — I should just like to ask 
you one question about another,” said Mr. Drake : Do 
you in your heart believe that Jesus Christ was an 
impostor ? ” 

“ I believe, if the story about him be true, that he was a 
Well-meaning man, enormously self-deceived.” 

** Your judgment seems to me enormously illogical. 
That any ordinarily good man should so deceive himself, 
appears to my mind altogether impossible and incredible.” 

“Ah ! but he was an extraordinarily good man.” 

“ Therefore the more likely to think too much of him- 
self ? ” 

“ Why not ? I see the same thing in his followers all 
about me.” 

“ Doubtless the servant shall be as his master,” said the 
minister, and closed his mouth, resolved to speak no more. 
But his conscience woke, and goaded him with the truth 
that had come from the mouth of its enemy — the reproach 
his disciples brought upon their master, for, in the judgment 
of the world, the master is as his disciples. 

“ You Christians,” the doctor went on, “seem to me to 
make yourselves, most unnecessarily, the slaves of a fancied 
ideal. I have no such ideal to contemplate ; yet I am not 
aware that you do better by each other than I am ready to 
do for any man. I can’t pretend to love every body, but I 
do my best for those I can help. Mr. Drake, I would gladly 
serve you.” 

The old man said nothing. His mood was stormy. 
Would he accept life itself from the hand of him who 
denied his Master ? — seek to the powers of darkness for 
cure? — kneel to Antichrist for favor, as if he and not Jesus 
were lord of life and death ? Would /le pray a man to 
whom the Bible was no better than a book of ballads, to 
come betwixt him and the evils of growing age and disap- 
pointment, to lighten for him the grasshopper, and stay the 
mourners as they went about his streets ! He had half 
turned, and was on the point of walking silent into the 
house, when he bethought himself of the impression it 
would make on the unbeliever, if he were thus to meet the 
offer of his kindness. Half turned, he stood hesitating. 


PAUL FABER. 


13 


I have a passion for therapeutics,” persisted the doctor ; 

‘‘ and if I can do any thing to ease the yoke upon the 
shoulders of my fellows — ” 

Mr. Drake did not hear the end of the sentence : he 
heard instead, somewhere in his soul, a voice saying, “ My 
yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” He could not let 
Faber help him. 

“ Doctor, you have the great gift of a kind heart,” he 
began, still half turned from him. 

“ My heart is like other people’s,” interrupted Faber. 

If a man wants help, and I’ve got it, what more natural 
than that we should come together ? ” 

There was in the doctor an opposition to every thing that 
had if it were but the odor of religion about it, which might 
well have suggested doubt of his own doubt, and weakness 
buttressing itself with assertion But the case was not so. What 
untruth there was in him was of another and more subtle 
kind. Neither must it be supposed that he was a propagand- 
ist, a proselytizer. Say nothing, and the doctor said noth- 
ing. Fire but a saloon pistol, however, and off went a 
great gun in answer — with no bravado, for the doctor was 
a gentleman. 

“ Mr. Faber,” said the minister, now turning toward him, 
and looking him full in the face, “ if you had a friend whom 
you loved with all your heart, would you be under obliga- 
tion to a man who counted your friendship a folly ? ” 

“ The cases are not parallel. Say the man merely did 
not believe your friend was alive, and there could be no 
insult to either.” 

“ If the denial of his being in life, opened the door to 
the greatest wrongs that could be done him — and if that 
denial seemed to me to have its source in some element of 
moral antagonism to him — could I accept — I put it to your- 
self, Mr. Faber — could I accept assistance from that nian ? 
Do not take it ill. You prize honesty ; so do I : ten times 
rather would I cease to live than accept life at the hand of 
an enemy to my Lord and Master.” 

“ I am very sorry, Mr. Drake,” said the doctor ; “ but 
from your point of view I suppose you are right. Good 
morning.” 

He turned Ruber from the minister’s door, went off 
quickly, and entered his own stable-yard just as the rector’s 
carriage appeared at the further end of the street. 


CHAPTER III. 


THE MANOR HOUSE. 

Mr. Bevis drove up to the inn, threw the reins to his 
coachman, got down, and helped his wife out of the car- 
riage. Then they parted, she to take her gift of flowers 
and butter to her poor relation, he to call upon Mrs. Ram- 
shorn. 

That lady, being, as every body knew, the widow of a dean, 
considered herself the chief ecclesiastical authority in Glas- 
ton. Her acknowledged friends would, if pressed, have 
found themselves compelled to admit that her theology was 
both scanty and confused, that her influence was not of the 
most elevating nature, and that those who doubted her per- 
sonal piety might have something to say in excuse of their 
uncharitableness ; but she spoke in the might of the matri- 
monial nimbus around her head, and her claims were undis- 
puted in Glaston. There was a propriety, springing from 
quite another source, however, in the rector’s turning his 
footsteps first toward the Manor House, where she resided. 
For his curate, whom his business in Glaston that Saturday 
concerned, had, some nine or ten months before, married 
Mrs. Ramshorn’s niece, Helen Lingard by name, who for 
many years had lived with her aunt, adding, if not to the 
comforts of the housekeeping, for Mrs. Ramshorn was 
plentifully enough provided for the remnant of her abode in 
this world, yet considerably to the style of her menage. 
Therefore, when all of a sudden, as it seemed, the girl 
calmly insisted on marrying the curate, a man obnoxious to 
every fiber of her aunt’s ecclesiastical nature, and trans- 
ferring to him, with a most unrighteous scorn of marriage- 
settlements, the entire property inherited from her father 
and brother, the disappointment of Mrs. Ramshorn in her 
niece was equaled only by her disgust at the object of her 
choice. 

With a firm, dignified step, as if he measured the dis- 
tance, the rector paced the pavement between the inn and 
the Manor House. He knew of no cause for the veiling of 
an eyelash before human being. It was true he had closed 
his eyes to certain faults in the man of good estate and old 


PAUL FABER. 


15 


name who had done him the honor of requesting the hand 
of his one child, and, leaving her to judge for herself, had 
not given her the knowledge which might have led her to 
another conclusion ; it had satisfied him that the man's wild 
oats were sown : after the crop he made no inquiry. It was 
also true that he had not mentioned a certain vice in the 
last horse he sold ; but then he hoped the severe measures 
taken had cured him. He was aware that at times he took 
a few glasses of port more than he would have judged 
it proper to carry to the pulpit or the communion table, for 
those he counted the presence of his Maker ; but there was a 
time for every thing. He was conscious to himself, I repeat, 
of nothing to cause him shame, and in the tramp of his boots 
there was certainly no self-abasement. It was true he per- 
formed next to none of the duties of the rectorship — but then 
neither did he turn any of its income to his own uses ; part 
he paid his curate, and the rest he laid out on the church, 
which might easily have consumed six times the amount in 
desirable, if not absolutely needful repairs. What further 
question could be made of the matter ? the church had her 
work done, and one of her most precious buildings pre- 
served from ruin to the bargain. How indignant he would 
have been at the suggestion that he was after all only an 
idolator, worshiping what he called The Churchy instead of 
the Lord Christ, the heart-inhabiting, world-ruling king of 
heaven ! But he was a very good sort of idolator, and some 
of the Christian graces had filtered through the roofs of the 
temple upon him — eminently those of hospitality and gen- 
eral humanity — even uprightness so far as his light 
extended ; so that he did less to obstruct the religion he 
thought he furthered, than some men who preach it as on the 
house-tops. 

It was from policy, not from confidence in Mrs. Ram- 
shorn, that he went to her first. He liked his curate, and 
every one knew she hated him. If, of any thing he did, two 
interpretations were possible — one good, and one bad, there 
was no room for a doubt as to which she would adopt and 
publish. Not even to herself, however, did she allow that 
one chief cause of her hatred was, that, having all her life 
been used to a pair of horses, she had now to put up with 
only a brougham. 

To the brass knocker on her door, the rector applied him- 
self, and sent a confident announcement of his presence 
through the house. Almost instantly the long-faced butler, 


i6 


PAUL FABER. 


half undertaker, half parish-clerk, opened the door ; and 
seeing the rector, drew it wide to the wall, inviting him to 
step into the library, as he had no doubt Mrs. Ramshorn 
would be at home to him. Nor was it long ere she 
appeared, in rather youthful morning dress, and gave him a 
hearty welcome ; after which, by no very wide spirals of 
descent, the talk swooped presently upon the curate. 

“ The fact is,” at length said the memorial shadow of the 
dean deceased, “ Mr. Wingfold is not a gentleman. It 
grieves me to say so of the husband of my niece, who 
has been to me as my own child, but the truth must 
be spoken. It may be difficult to keep such men out of 
holy orders, but if ever the benefices of the church come to 
be freely bestowed upon them, that moment the death-bell 
of religion is rung in England. My late husband said so. 
While such men keep to barns and conventicles we can 
despise them, but when they creep into the fold, then there 
is just cause for alarm. The longer I live, the better I see 
my poor husband was right.” 

‘‘ I should scarcely have thought such a man as you de- 
scribe could have captivated Helen,” said the rector with a 
smile. 

‘‘ Depend upon it she perceives her mistake well enough 
by this time,” returned Tvlrs. Ramshorn. “ A lady born and 
bred 7?iust make the discovery t^efore a week is over. But 
poor Helen always was headstrong ! And in this out-of- 
the-world place she saw so little of gentlemen ! ” 

The rector could not help thinking birth and breeding 
must go for little indeed, if nothing less than marriage could 
reveal to a lady that a man was not a gentleman. 

“Nobody knows,” continued Mrs. Ramshorn, “who or 
what his father — not to say his grandfather, was ! But 
would you believe it ! when I asked her who the man was, 
having a right to information concerning the person she 
was about to connect with the family, she told me she had 
never thought of inquiring. I pressed it upon her as a duty 
she owed to society ; she told me she was content with the 
man himself, and was not going to ask him about his family. 
She would wait till they were married ! Actually, on my 
word as a lady, she said so, Mr. Bevis ! What could I do ? 
She was of age, and independent fortune. And as to 
gratitude, I know the ways of the world too well to look for 
that.” 

“We old ones ” — Mrs. Ramshorn bridled a little : she was 


PAUL FABER. 


17 


only fifty-seven !— “ have had our turn, and theirs is come,’^ 
said the rector rather inconsequently. 

“And a pretty mess they are like to make of it! 
— what with infidelity and blasphemy — I must say it — 
blasphemy ! — Really you must do something, Mr. Bevis. 
Things have arrived at such a pass that, I give you my 
word, reflections not a few are made upon the rector for 
committing his flock to the care of such a wolf— a fox / call 
him." 

“ To-morrow I shall hear him preach,” said the parson. 

“ Then I sincerely trust no one will give him warning of 
your intention : he is so clever, he would throw dust in any 
body’s eyes.” 

The rector laughed. He had no overweening estimate 
of his own abilities, but he did pride himself a little on his 
common sense. 

“ But,” the lady went on, “ in a place like this, where 
every body talks, I fear the chance is small against his hear- 
ing of your arrival. Anyhow I would not have you trust 
to one sermon. He will say just the opposite the next. 
He contradicts himself incredibly. Even in the same ser- 
mon I have heard him say things diametrically opposite.” 

“ He can not have gone so far as to advocate the real 
presence : a rumor of that has reached me,” said the rector. 

“ There it is ! ” cried Mrs. Ramshorn. “ If you had 
asked me, I should have said he insisted the holy eucharist 
meant neither more nor less than any other meal to which 
some said a grace. The man has not an atom of consist- 
ency in his nature. He will say and unsay as fast as one 
sentence can follow the other, and if you tax him with it, 
he will support both sides : at least, that is my experience 
with him. I speak as I find him.” 

“ What then would you have me do ? ” said the rector. 
“ The straightforward way would doubtless be to go to him.” 

“ You would, I fear, gain nothing by that. He is so 
specious ! The only safe way is to dismiss him without giv- 
ing a reason. Otherwise, he will certainly prove you in the 
wrong. Don’t take my word. Get the opinion of your 
church-wardens. Every body knows he has made an atheist 
of poor Faber. It is sadder than I have words to say. He 
was such a gentlemanly fellow ! ” 

The rector took his departure, and made a series of calls 
upon those he judged the most influential of the congrega- 
tion. He did not think to ask for what they were influen- 


i8 


PAUL FABER. 


tial, or why he should go to them rather than the people of 
the alms-house. What he heard embarrassed him not a 
little. His friends spoke highly of Wingfold, his enemies 
otherwise : the character of his friends his judge did not 
attempt to weigh with that of his enemies, neither did he 
attempt to discover why these were his enemies and those 
his friends. No more did he make the observation, that, 
while his enemies differed in the things they said against 
him, his friends agreed in those they said for him ; the fact 
being, that those who did as he roused their conscience to 
see they ought, more or less understood the man and his 
aims ; while those who would not submit to the authority 
he brought to bear upon them, and yet tried to measure and 
explain him after the standards of their own being and 
er.deavors, failed ludicrously. The church-wardens told 
him that, ever since he came, the curate had done nothing 
but set the congregation by the ears ; and that he could 
not fail to receive as a weighty charge. But they told him 
also that some of the principal dissenters declared him to be 
a fountain of life in the place— and that seemed to him to 
involve the worst accusation of all. For, without going so 
far as to hold, or even say without meaning it, that dis- 
senters ought to be burned, Mr. Bevis regarded it as one of 
the first of merits, that a man should be a good churchman. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE RECTORY. 


The curate had been in the study all the morning. Three 
times had his wife softly turned the handle of his door, but 
finding it locked, had re-turned the handle yet more softly, 
and departed noiselessly. Next time she knocked — and he 
came to her pale-eyed, but his face almost luminous, and a 
smile hovering about his lips : she knew then that either a 
battle had been fought amongst the hills, and he had won, 
or a thought-storm had been raging, through which at length 
had descended the meek-eyed Peace. She looked in his 
face for a moment with silent reverence, then offered her 


PAUL FABER. 


^9 


lips, took him by the hand, and, without a word, led him 
down the stair to their mid-day meal. When that was over, 
she made him lie down, and taking a novel, read him asleep. 
She woke him to an early tea — not, however, after it, to 
return to his study : in the drawing-room, beside his wife, 
he always got the germ of his discourse — his germon, he 
called it — ready for its growth in the pulpit. Now he lay 
on the couch, now rose and stood, now walked about the 
room, now threw himself again on the couch ; while, all the 
time his wife played softly on her piano, extemporizing and 
interweaving, with an invention, taste, and expression, of 
which before her marriage she had been quite incapable. 

The text in his mind was, “ Ye can not serve God and 
Ma7nmon'' But not once did he speak to his wife about it. 
He did not even tell her what his text was. Long ago he 
had given her to understand that he could not part with her 
as one of his congregation — could not therefore take her 
into his sermon before he met her in her hearing phase in 
church, with the rows of pews and faces betwixt him and 
her, making her once more one of his flock, the same into 
whose heart he had so often agonized to pour the words of 
rousing, of strength, of consolation. 

On the Saturday, except his wife saw good reason, she 
would let no one trouble him, and almost the sole reason she 
counted good was trouble : if a person was troubled, then 
he might trouble. His friends knew this, and seldom came 
near him on a Saturday. But that evening, Mr. Drew, the 
draper, who, although a dissenter, was one of the curate’s 
warmest friends, called late, when, he thought in his way of 
looking at sermons, that for the morrow must be now 
finished, and laid aside like a parcel for delivery the next 
morning. Helen went to him. He told her the rector was 
in the town, had called upon not a few of his parishioners, 
and doubtless was going to church in the morning. 

“ Thank you, Mr. Drew. I perfectly understand your 
kindness,” said Mrs. Wingfold, “but I shall not tell my 
husband to-night.” 

“ Excuse the liberty, ma’am, but — but — do you think it 
well for a wife to hide things from her husband ? ” 

Helen laughed merrily. 

“ Assuredly not, as a rule,” she replied. “ But suppose I 
knew he would be vexed with me if I told him some partic- 
ular thing ? Suppose I know now that, when I do tell him 
on Monday, he will say to me, ‘ Thank you, wife. I am 


20 


PAUL FABER. 


glad you kept that from me till I had done my work,’ — what 
then ? ” 

‘‘ All right theUy' answered the draper. 

“You see, Mr. Drew, we think married people should be 
so sure of each other that each should not only be content, 
but should prefer not to know what the other thinks it bet- 
ter not to tell. If my husband overheard any one calling 
me names, I don’t think he would tell me. He knows, as 
well as I do, that I am not yet good enough to behave bet- 
ter to any one for knowing she hates and reviles me. It 
would be but to propagate the evil, and for my part too, I 
would rather not be told.” 

“ I quite understand you, ma’am,” answered the draper. 

“ I know you do,” returned Helen, with emphasis. 

Mr. Drew blushed to the top of his white forehead, while 
the lower part of his face, which in its forms was insignifi- 
cant, blossomed into a smile as radiant as that of an infant. 
He knew Mrs. Wingfold was aware of the fact, known only 
to two or three beside in the town, that the lady, who for 
the last few months had been lodging in his house, was his 
own wife, who had forsaken him twenty years before. The 
man who during that time had passed for her husband, had 
been otherwise dishonest as well, and had fled the country ; 
she and her daughter, brought to absolute want, were re- 
ceived into his house by her forsaken husband ; there they 
occupied the same chamber, the mother ordered every thing, 
and the daughter did not know that she paid for nothing. 
If the ways of transgressors are hard, those of a righteous 
man are not always easy. When Mr. Drew would now and 
then stop suddenly in the street, take off his hat and wipe 
his forehead, little people thought the round smiling face 
had such a secret behind it. Had they surmised a skeleton 
in his house, they would as little have suspected it masked 
in the handsome, well-dressed woman of little over forty, 
who, with her pretty daughter so tossy and airy, occupied 
his first floor, and was supposed to pay him handsomely for 
it. 

The curate slept soundly, and woke in the morning eager 
to utter what he had. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE ROAD TO OWLKIRK. 

Paul Faber fared otherwise. Plardly was he in bed 
before he was called out of it again. A messenger had 
come from Mrs. Puckridge to say that Miss Meredith was 
worse, and if the doctor did not start at once, she would be 
dead before he reached Owlkirk. He sent orders to his 
groom to saddle Niger and bring him round instantly, and 
hurried on his clothes, vexed that he had taken Ruber both 
in the morning and afternoon, and could not have him now. 
But Niger was a good horse also : if he was but two-thirds 
of Ruber’s size, he was but one-third of his age, and saw 
better at night. On the other hand he was less easily seen, 
but the midnight there was so still and deserted, that that 
was of small consequence. In a few minutes they were out 
together in a lane as dark as pitch, compelled now to keep 
to the roads, for there was not light enough to see the 
pocket-compass by which the surgeon sometimes steered 
across country. 

Could we learn what waking-dreams haunted the boyhood 
of a man, we should have a rare help toward understanding 
the character he has developed. Those of the young Faber 
were, almost exclusively, of playing the prince of help and 
deliverance among women and men. Like most boys that 
dream, he dreamed himself rich and powerful, but the 
wealth and power were for the good of his fellow-creatures. 
If it must be confessed that he lingered most over the 
thanks and admiration he set to haunt his dream-steps, and 
hover about his dream-person, it must be remembered that 
he was the only real person in the dreams, and that he re- 
garded lovingly the mere shadows of his fellow-men. His 
dreams were not of strength and destruction, but of influ- 
ence and life. Even his revenges never reached further 
than the making of his enemies ashamed. 

It was the spirit of help, then, that had urged him into 
the profession he followed. He had found much dirt about 
the door of it, and had not been able to cross the threshold 
without some cleaving to his garments. He is a high-souled 
youth indeed, in whom the low regards and corrupt knowledge 


22 


PAUL FABER. 


of his superiors will fail utterly of degrading influence ; he 
must be one stronger than Faber who can listen to scoffing 
materialism from the lips of authority and experience, and not 
come to look upon humanity and life with a less reverent 
regard. What man can learn to look upon the dying as so 
much matter about to be rekneaded and remodeled into a 
fresh mass of feverous joys, futile aspirations, and stinging 
chagrins, without a self-contempt from which there is no 
shelter but the poor hope that we may be a little better than 
we appear to ourselves. But Faber escaped the worst. He 
did not learn to look on humanity without respect, or to 
meet the stare of appealing eyes from man or animal, with- 
out genuine response — without sympathy. He never joined 
in any jest over suffering, not to say betted on the chance 
of the man who lay panting under the terrors of an im- 
pending operation. Can one be capable of such things, 
and not have sunk deep indeed in the putrid pit of decom- 
posing humanity ? It is true that before he began to prac- 
tice, Faber had come to regard man as a body and not an 
embodiment, the highest in him as dependent on his physi- 
cal organization — as indeed but the aroma, as it were, of its 
blossom the brain, therefore subject to all the vicissitudes 
of the human plant from which it rises ; but he had been 
touched to issues too fine to be absolutely interpenetrated 
and inslaved by the reaction of accepted theories. His 
poetic nature, like the indwelling fire of the world, was ever 
ready to play havoc with induration and constriction, and 
the same moment when degrading influences ceased to 
operate, the delicacy of his feeling began to revive. Even 
at its lowest, this delicacy preserved him from much into 
which vulgar natures plunge ; it kept alive the memory of 
a lovely mother ; and fed the flame of that wondering, wor- 
shiping reverence for women which is the saviour of men 
until the Truth Himself saves both. A few years of wor- 
thy labor in his profession had done much to develop him, 
and his character for uprightness, benevolence, and skill, 
with the people of Glaston and its neighborhood, where he 
had been ministering only about a year, was already of 
the highest. Even now, when, in a fever of honesty, 
he declared there could be no God in such an ill- 
ordered world, so full was his heart of the human 
half of religion, that he could not stand by the bedside of 
dying man or woman, without lamenting that there was no 
consolation — that stern truth would allow him to cast no 


PAUL FABER. 


23 


feeblest glamour of hope upon the departing shadow. His 
was a nobler nature than theirs who, believing no more than 
he, are satisfied with the assurance that at the heart of the 
evils of the world lie laws unchangeable. 

The main weak point in him was, that, while he was in- 
deed tender-hearted, and did no kindnesses to be seen of 
men, he did them to be seen of himself : he saw him who 
did them all the time. The boy was in the man ; doing his 
deeds he sought, not the approbation merely, but the admi- 
ration of his own consciousness. I am afraid to say this 
was wrongs but it was poor and childish, crippled his walk, 
and obstructed his higher development. He liked to know 
himself a benefactor. Such a man may well be of noble 
nature, but he is a mere dabbler in nobility. Faber de- 
lighted in the thought that, having repudiated all motives 
of personal interest involved in religious belief, all that 
regard for the future, with its rewards and punishments, 
which, in his ignorance, genuine or willful, of essential 
Christianity, he took for its main potence, he ministered to 
his neighbor, doing to him as he would have him do to him- 
self, hopeless of any divine recognition, of any betterness 
beyond the grave, in a fashion at least as noble as that of 
the most devoted of Christians. It did not occur to him to 
ask if he loved him as well — if his care about him was 
equal to his satisfaction in himself. Neither did he reflect 
that the devotion he admired in himself had been brought 
to the birth in him through others, in whom it was first gen- 
erated by a fast belief in an unselfish, loving, self-devoting 
God. Had he inquired he might have discovered that this 
belief had carried some men immeasurably further in the 
help of their fellows, than he had yet gone. Indeed he 
might, I think, have found instances of men of faith spend- 
ing their lives for their fellows, whose defective theology or 
diseased humility would not allow them to hope their own 
salvation. Inquiry might have given him ground for fear- 
ing that with the love of the imagined God, the love of the 
indubitable man would decay and vanish. But such as 
Faber was, he was both loved and honored by all whom, he 
had ever attended ; and, with his fine tastes, his genial 
nature, his quiet conscience, his good health, his enjoyment 
of life, his knowledge and love of his profession, his activ- 
ity, his tender heart — especially to women and children, his 
keen intellect, and his devising though not embodying im- 
agination, if any man could get on without a God, Faber 


24 


PAUL FABER. 


was that man. He was now trying it, and as yet the trial 
had cost him no effort : he seemed to himself to be doing 
very well indeed. And why should he not do as well as the 
thousands, who counting themselves religious people, get 
through the business of the hour, the day, the week, the 
year, without one reference in any thing they do or abstain 
from doing, to the will of God, or the words of Christ ? If 
he was more helpful to his fellows than they, he fared bet- 
ter ; for actions in themselves good, however imperfect the 
motives that give rise to them, react blissfully upon charac- 
ter and nature. It is better to be an atheist who does the 
will of God, than a so-called Christian who does not. The 
atheist will not be dismissed because he said Lo7'd^ Lord^ 
and did not obey. The thing that God loves is the only 
lovely thing, and he who does it, does well, and is upon the 
way to discover that he does it very badly. When he comes 
to do it as the will of the perfect Good, then is he on the 
road to do it perfectly — that is, from love of its own inher- 
ent self-constituted goodness, born in the heart of the Per- 
fect. The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the 
road to the kingdom of truth and love. Not the less must 
the stage be journeyed ; every path diverging from it is 
the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the great 
fire.” 

It was with more than his usual zeal of helpfulness that 
Faber was now riding toward Owlkirk, to revisit his new 
patient. Could he have mistaken the symptoms of her 
attack ? 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE COTTAGE. 

Mrs. Puckridge was anxiously awaiting the doctor’s 
arrival.^ She stood by the bedside of her lodger, miserable 
in her ignorance and consequent helplessness. The lady 
tossed and moaned, but for very pain could neither toss nor 
moan much, and breathed — panted, rather — very quick. 
Her color was white more than pale, and now and then she 
shivered from head to foot, but her eyes burned. Mrs. 
Puckridge kept bringing her hot flannels, and stood talking 
between the changes. 


PAUL FABER. 


25 


“ I wish the doctor would come !— Them doctors !— I 
hope to goodness Dr. Faber wasn’t out when the boy got to 
Glaston.^ Every body in this mortal universe always is out 
when he’s wanted : that’s my experience. You ain’t so old 
as me, miss. And Dr. Faber, you see, miss, he be such a 
favorite as have to go out to his dinner not unfrequent. 
They may have to send miles to fetch him.” 

She talked in the vain hope of distracting the poor lady’s 
attention from her suffering. 

It was a little up stairs cottage-room, the corners betwixt 
the ceiling and the walls cut off by the slope of the roof. 
So dark was the night, that, when ■ Mrs. Puckridge carried 
the candle out of the room, the unshaded dormer window 
did not show itself even by a bluish glimmer. But light 
and dark were alike to her who lay in the little tent-bed, in 
the midst of whose white curtains, white coverlid, and white 
pillows, her large eyes, black as human eyes could ever be, 
^yere like wells of darkness throwing out flashes of strange 
light. Her hair too was dark, brown-black, of great plenty, 
and so fine that it seemed to go off in a mist on the white- 
ness. It had been her custom to throw it over the back of 
her bed, but in this old-fashioned one that was impossible, 
and it lay, in loveliest confusion, scattered here and there 
over pillow and coverlid, as if the wind had been tossing it 
all a long night at his will. Some of it had strayed more 
than half way to the foot of the bed. Her face, distorted 
almost though it was with distress, showed yet a regularity 
of feature rarely to be seen in combination with such evi- 
dent power of expression. Suffering had not yet flattened 
the delicate roundness of her cheek, or sharpened the angles 
of her chin. In her whiteness, and her constrained, pang- 
thwarted motions from side to side, she looked like a form 
of marble in the agonies of coming to life at the prayer of 
some Pygmalion. In throwing out her arms, she had flung 
back the bedclothes, and her daintily embroidered night- 
gown revealed a rather large, grand throat, of the same 
rare whiteness. Her hands were perfect — every finger 
and every nail — 

Those fine* nimble brethren small, 

Armed with pearl-shell helmets all. 


‘ Joshua Sylvester. I suspect the word ought to be five^ not fine^ as 
my copy (1613) has it. 


26 


PAUL FABER. 


When Mrs. Puckridge came into the room, she always set 
her candle on the sill of the storm-window : it was there, 
happily, when the doctor drew near the village, and it guided 
him to the cottage-gate. He fastened Niger to the gate, 
crossed the little garden, gently lifted the door-latch, and 
ascended the stair. He found the door of the chamber 
open, signed to Mrs. Puckridge to be still, softly approached 
the bed, and stood gazing in silence on the sufferer, who 
lay at the moment apparently unconscious. But suddenly, 
as if she had become aware of a presence, she flashed wide 
her great eyes, and the pitiful entreaty that came into them 
when she saw him, went straight to his heart. Faber felt 
more for the sufferings of some of the lower animals than 
for certain of his patients ; but children and women he 
would serve like a slave. The dumb appeal of her eyes 
almost unmanned him. 

I am sorry to see you so ill,” he said, as he took her 
wrist. “You are in pain : where ? ” 

Her other hand moved toward her side in reply. Every 
thing indicated pleurisy — such that there was no longer 
room for gentle measures. She must be relieved at once : 
he must open a vein. In the changed practice of later days, 
it had seldom fallen to the lot of Faber to perform the very 
simple operation of venesection, but that had little to do 
with the trembling of the hands which annoyed him with 
himself, when he proceeded to undo a sleeve of his patient’s 
nightdress. Finding no button, he took a pair of scissors 
from his pocket, cut ruthlessly through linen and lace, and 
rolled back the sleeve. It disclosed an arm the sight of 
which would have made a sculptor rejoice as over some 
marbles of old Greece. I can not describe it, and if I could, 
for very love and reverence I would rather let it alone. 
Faber felt his heart rise in his throat at the necessity of 
breaking that exquisite surface with even such an insignifi- 
cant breach and blemish as the shining steel betwixt his 
forefinger and thumb must occasion. But a slight tremble 
of the hand he held acknowledged the intruding sharpness, 
and then the red parabola rose from the golden bowl. He 
stroked the lovely arm to help its flow, and soon the girl 
once more opened her eyes and looked at him. Already 
her breathing was easier. But presently her eyes began to 
glaze with approaching faintness, and he put his thumb on 
the wound. She smiled and closed them. He bound up 
her arm, laid it gently by her side, gave her something to 


PAUL FABER. 


27 


drink, and sat down. He sat until he saw her sunk in a 
quiet, gentle sleep : ease had dethroned pain, and order had 
begun to dawn out of threatened chaos. 

“ Thank God ! ” he said, involuntarily, and stood up : 
what all that meant, God only knows. 

After various directions to Mrs. Puckridge, to which she 
seemed to attend, but which, being as simple as necessary, 
I fear she forgot the moment they were uttered, the doctor 
mounted, and rode away. The darkness was gone, for the 
moon was rising, but when the road compelled him to face 
her, she blinded him nearly as much. Slowly she rose 
through a sky freckled with wavelets of cloud, and as she 
crept up amongst them she brought them all out, in bluish, 
pearly, and opaline gray. Then, suddenly almost, as it 
seemed, she left them, and walked up aloft, drawing a thin 
veil around her as she ascended. All was so soft, so sleepy, 
so vague, it seemed to Paul as he rode slowly along, him- 
self almost asleep, as if the Night had lost the blood he had 
caused to flow, and the sweet exhaustion that followed had 
from the lady’s brain wandered out over Nature herself, as 
she sank, a lovelier Katadyomene, into the hushed sea of 
pain-won repose. 

Was he in love with her ? I do not know. I could tell, 
if I knew what being in love is. I think no two loves were 
ever the same since the creation of the world. I know that 
something had passed from her eyes to his — but what ? Pie 
may have been in love with her already ; but ere long my 
reader may be more sure than I that he was not. The 
Maker of men alone understands His awful mystery between 
the man and the woman. But without it, frightful indeed 
as are some of its results, assuredly the world He has made 
would burst its binding rings and fly asunder in shards, 
leaving His spirit nothing to enter, no time to work His 
lovely will. 

It must be to any man a terrible thing to find himself in 
wild pain, with no God of whom to entreat that his soul may 
not faint within him ; but to a man who can think as well as 
feel, iUwere a more terrible thing still, to find himself afloat 
on the tide of a lovely passion, with no God to whom to cry, 
accountable to Himself for that which He has made. Will 
any man who has ever cast more than a glance into the 
mysteries of his being, dare think himself sufficient to the 
ruling of his nature ? And if he rule it not, what shall he 
be but the sport of the demons that will ride its tempests^ 


28 


PAUL FABER. 


that will rouse and torment its ocean ? What help then is 
there ? What high-hearted man would consent to be pos- 
sessed and sweetly ruled by the loveliest of angels ? Truly 
it were but a daintier madness. Come thou, holy Love, 
father of my spirit, nearer to the unknown deeper me than 
my consciousness is to its known self, possess me utterly, 
for thou art more me than I am myself. Rule thou. Then 
first I rule. Shadow me from the too radiant splendors of 
thy own creative thought. Folded in thy calm, I shall love, 
and not die. And ye, women, be the daughters of Him 
from whose heart came your mothers ; be the saviours of 
men, and neither their torment nor their prey ! 


CHAPTER VH. 

THE PULPIT. 

Before morning it rained hard again ; but it cleared at 
sunrise, and the first day of the week found the world new- 
washed. Glaston slept longer than usual, however, for all 
the shine, and in the mounting sun looked dead and 
deserted. There were no gay shop-windows to reflect his 
beams, or fill them with rainbow colors. There were no 
carriages or carts, and only, for a few moments, one rider. 
That was Paul Faber again, on Ruber now, aglow in the 
morning. There were no children playing yet about the 
streets or lanes ; but the cries of some came at intervals 
from unseen chambers, as the Sunday soap stung their eyes, 
or the Sunday comb tore their matted locks. 

As Faber rode out of his stable-yard. Wingfold took his 
hat from its peg, to walk through his churchyard. He 
lived almost in the churchyard, for, happily, since his mar- 
riage the rectory had lost its tenants, and Mr. Bevis had 
allowed him to occupy it, in lieu of part of his salary. It 
was not yet church-time by hours, but he had a custom of 
going every Sunday morning, in the fine weather, quite 
early, to sit for an hour or two alone in the pulpit, amidst 
the absolute solitude and silence of the great church. It 
was a door, he said, through which a man who could not 
go to Horeb, might enter and find the power that dwells on 
mountain-tops and in desert places. 


PAUL FABER. 


29 


He went slowly through the churchyard, breathing deep 
breaths of the delicious spring-morning air. Rain-drops 
were sparkling all over the grassy graves, and in the hol- 
lows of the stones they had gathered in pools. The eyes of 
the death-heads were full of water, as if weeping at the 
defeat of their master. Every now and then a soft little wind 
awoke, like a throb of the spirit of life, and shook together 
the scattered drops upon the trees, and then down came dia- 
mond showers on the grass and daisies of the mounds, and 
fed the green moss in the letters of the epitaphs. Over all 
the sun was shining, as if everywhere and forever spring 
was the order of things. And is it not so ? Is not the idea 
of the creation an eternal spring ever trembling on the verge 
of summer ? It seemed so to the curate, who was not given 
to sad, still less to sentimental moralizing over the graves. 
From such moods his heart recoiled. To him they were 
weak and mawkish, and in him they would have been treach- 
erous. No grave was to him the place where a friend was 
lying ; it was but a cenotaph — the place where the Lord had 
lain. 

“ Let those possessed with demons haunt the tombs,” he 
said, as he sat down in the pulpit ; “ for me, I will turn my 
back upon them with the risen Christ. Yes, friend, I hear 
you ! I know what you say ! You have more affection than 
I ? you can not forsake the last resting-place of the beloved ? 
Well, you may have more feeling than I ; there is no gauge 
by which I can tell, and if there were, it would be useless : 
we are as God made us. — No, I will not say that : I will say 
rather, I am as God is making me, and I shall one day be 
as He has made me. Meantime I know that He will have 
me love my enemy tenfold more than now I love my friend. 
Thou believest that the malefactor — ah, there was faith now ! 
Of two men dying together in agony and shame, the one 
beseeches of the other the grace of a king ! Thou believest, 
I say — at least thou professest to believe that the malefactor 
was that very day with Jesus in Paradise, and yet thou 
broodest over thy friend’s grave, gathering thy thoughts 
about the pitiful garment he left behind him, and letting 
himself drift away into the unknown, forsaken of all 
but thy vaguest, most shapeless thinkings ! Tell me not 
thou fearest to enter there whence has issued no revealing. 
It is God who gives thee thy mirror of imagination, and if 
thou keep it clean, it will give thee back no shadow but of 
the truth. Never a cry of love went forth from human heart 


30 


PAUL FABER. 


but it found some heavenly chord to fold it in. Be sure thy 
friend inhabits a day not out of harmony with this morning 
of earthly spring, with this sunlight, those rain-drops, that 
sweet wind that flows so softly over his grave.” 

It was the first sprouting of a germon. He covered it up 
and left it : he had something else to talk to his people 
about this morning. 

While he sat thus in the pulpit, his wife was praying for 
him ere she rose. She had not learned to love him in the 
vestibule of society, that court of the Gentiles, but in the 
chamber of torture and the clouded adytum of her own 
spiritual temple. For there a dark vapor had hid the deity 
enthroned, until the words of His servant melted the gloom. 
Then she saw that what she had taken for her own inner- 
most chamber of awful void, was the dwelling-place of the 
most high, most lovely, only One, and through its windows 
she beheld a cosmos dawning out of chaos. Therefore the 
wife walked beside the husband in the strength of a common 
faith in absolute Good ; and not seldom did the fire which 
the torch of his prophecy had kindled upon her altar, kindle 
again that torch, when some bitter wind of evil words, or 
mephitis of human perversity, or thunder-rain of foiled 
charity, had extinguished it. She loved every hair upon his 
head, but loved his well-being infinitely more than his mortal 
life. A wrinkle on his forehead would cause her a pang, yet 
would she a thousand times rather have seen him dead than 
known him guilty of one of many things done openly by not 
a few of his profession. 

And now, as one sometimes wonders what he shall dream 
to-night, she sat wondering what new thing, or what old 
thing fresher and more alive than the new, would this day 
flow from his heart into hers. The following is the sub- 
stance of what, a few hours after, she did hear from him. 
His rector, sitting between Mrs. Bevis and Mrs. Ramshorn, 
heard it also. The radiance of truth shone from Wing- 
fold’s face as he spoke, and those of the congregation who 
turned away from his words were those whose lives ran 
counter to the spirit of them. Whatever he uttered grew 
out of a whole world of thought, but it grew before them — 
that is, he always thought afresh in the presence of the 
people, and spoke extempore. 

“ ‘ Ye can not serve God a7id mammoji* 

Who said this ? The Lord by whose name ye are called. 


PAUL FABER. 


31 


in whose name this house was built, and who will at last 
judge every one of us. And yet how many of you are, and 
have been for years, trying your very hardest to do the 
thing your Master tells you is impossible ! Thou man ! 
Thou woman ! I appeal to thine own conscience whether 
thou art not striving to serve God and mammon. 

“ But stay ! am I right ? — It can not be. For surely if a 
man strove hard to serve God and mammon, he would pres- 
ently discover the thing was impossible. It is not easy to 
serve God, and it is easy to serve mammon ; if one strove 
to serve God, the hard thing, along with serving mammon, 
the easy thing, the incompatibility of the two endeavors 
must appear. The fact is there is no strife in you. With 
ease you serve mammon every day and hour of your lives, 
and for God, you do not even ask yourselves the question 
whether you are serving Him or no. Yet some of you are 
at this very moment indignant that I call you servers of 
mammon. Those of you who know that God knows you 
are His servants, know also that I do not mean you ; there- 
fore, those who are indignant at being called the servants of 
mammon, are so because they are indeed such. As I say 
these words I do not lift my eyes, not that I am afraid to 
look you in the face, as uttering an offensive thing, but that 
I would have your own souls your accusers. 

“ Let us consider for a moment the God you do not serve, 
and then for a moment the mammon you do serve. The 
God you do not serve is the Fathe-r of Lights, the Source of 
love, the Maker of man and woman, the Head of the great 
family, the Father of fatherhood and motherhood ; the Life- 
giver who would die to preserve His children, but would 
rather slay them than they should live the servants of evil ; 
the God who can neither think nor do nor endure any thing 
mean or unfair ; the God of poetry and music and every 
marvel ; the God of the mountain tops, and the rivers that 
run from the snows of death, to make the earth joyous with 
life ; the God of the valley and the wheat-field, the God who 
has set love betwixt youth and maiden ; the God and Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect ; the God whom Christ 
knew, with whom Christ was satisfied, of whom He declared 
that to know Him was eternal life. The mammon you do 
serve is not a mere negation, but a positive Death. His 
temple is a darkness, a black hollow, ever hungry, in the 
heart of man, who tumbles into it every thing that should 
make life noble and lovely. To all who serve him he makes 


32 


PAUL FABER. 


it seem that his alone is the reasonable service. His wages 
are death, but he calls them life, and they believe him. I will 
tell you some of the marks of his service — a few of the badges 
of his household — for he has no visible temple ; no man bends 
the knee to him ; it is only his soul, his manhood, that the 
worshiper casts in the dust before him. If a man talks of 
the main chance, meaning thereby that of making money, or 
of number one, meaning thereby self, except indeed he 
honestly jest, he is a servant of mammon. If, when thou 
makest a bargain, thou thinkest 07ily of thyself and thy gain, 
though art a servant of mammon. The eager looks of those 
that would get money, the troubled looks of those who have 
lost it, worst of all the gloating looks of them that have it, — 
these are sure signs of the service of mammon. If in 
the church thou sayest to the rich man, ‘ Sit here in a good 
place,’ and to the poor man, ‘ Stand there,’ thou art a 
mammon-server. If thou favorest the company of those 
whom men call well-to-do, when they are only well-to-eat, 
well-to-drink, or well-to-show, and declinest that of the sim- 
ple and the meek, then in thy deepest consciousness know 
that thou servest mammon, not God. If thy hope of well- 
being in time to come, rests upon thy houses, or lands, or 
business, or money in store, and not upon the living God, be 
thou friendly and kind with the overflowings of thy posses- 
sions, or a churl whom no man loves, thou art equally a 
server of mammon. If the loss of thy goods would take 
from thee the joy of thy life ; if it would tear thy heart that 
the men thou hadst feasted should hold forth to thee the 
two fingers instead of the whole hand ; nay, if thy thought 
of to-morrow makes thee quail before the duty of to-day, if 
thou broodest over the evil that is not come, and turnest 
from the God who is with thee in the life of the hour, thou 
servest mammon ; he holds thee in his chain ; thou art his 
ape, whom he leads about the world for the mockery of 
his fellow-devils. If with thy word, yea, even with thy 
judgment, thou confessest that God is the only good, yet 
livest as if He had sent thee into the world to make thyself 
rich before thou die ; if it will add one feeblest pang to 
the pains of thy death, to think that thou must leave thy 
fair house, thy ancestral trees, thy horses, thy shop, thy 
books, behind thee, then art thou a servant of mammon, 
and far truer to thy master than he will prove to thee. 
Ah, slave ! the moment the breath is out of the body, 
lo, he has already deserted thee ! and of all in which 


PAUL FABER. 


33 


thou didst rejoice, all that gave thee such power over 
thy fellows, there is not left so much as a spike of thistle- 
down for the wind to waft from thy sight. For all thou 
hast had, there is nothing to show. Where is the friend- 
ship in which thou mightst have invested thy money, in 
place of burying it in the maw of mammon? Troops 
of the dead might now be coming to greet thee with love 
and service, hadst thou made thee friends with thy money ; 
but, alas ! to thee it was not money, but mammon, for 
thou didst love it — not for the righteousness and salvation 
thou by its means mightst work in the earth, but for the 
honor it brought thee among men, for the pleasures and 
immunities it purchased. Some of you are saying in your 
hearts, ‘ Preach to thyself, and practice thine own preach- 
ing ; ’ — and you say well. And so I mean to do, lest 
having preached to others I should be myself a cast-away 
— drowned with some of you in the same pond of filth. 
God has put money in my power through the gift of 
one whom you know. I shall endeavor to be a faithful 
steward of that which God through her has committed to me 
in trust. Hear me, friends — to none of you am I the less 
a friend that I tell you truths you would hide from your 
own souls : money is not mammon ; it is God’s inven- 
tion ; it is good and the gift of God. But for money and 
the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in 
the world. It is powerful for good when divinely used. 
Give it plenty of air, and it is sweet as the hawthorn ; shut 
it up, and it cankers and breeds worms. Like all the best 
gifts of God, like the air and the water, it must have 
motion and change and shakings asunder ; like the earth 
itself, like the heart and mind of man, it must be broken 
and turned, not heaped together and neglected. It is an 
angel of mercy, whose wings are full of balm and dews and 
refreshings ; but when you lay hold of him, pluck his pin- 
ions, pen him in a yard, and fall down and worship him — 
then, with the blessed vengeance of his master, he deals 
plague and confusion and terror, to stay the idolatry. If I 
misuse or waste or hoard the divine thing, I pray my Mas- 
ter to see to it — my God to punish me. Any fire rather 
than be given over to the mean idol ! And now I will make 
an offer to my townsfolk in the face of this congregation — 
that, whoever will, at the end of three years, bring me his 
books, to him also will I lay open mine, that he will see how 
I have sought to make friends of the mammon of unright- 


34 


PAUL FABER. 


eousness. Of the mammon-server I expect to be judged 
according to the light that is in him, and that light I know 
to be darkness. 

“Friend, be not a slave. Be wary. Look not on the 
gold when it is yellow in thy purse. Hoard not. In God's 
name, spend — spend on. Take heed how thou spendest, 
but take heed that thou spend. Be thou as the sun in 
heaven ; let thy gold be thy rays, thy angels of love and life 
and deliverance. Be thou a candle of the Lord to spread 
His light through the world. If hitherto, in any fashion of 
faithlessness, thou hast radiated darkness into the universe, 
humble thyself, and arise and shine. 

“ But if thou art poor, then look not on thy purse when it 
is empty. He who desires more than God wills him to have, 
is also a servant of mammon, for he trusts in what God has 
made, and not in God Himself. He who laments what God 
has taken from him, he is a servant of mammon. He who 
for care can not pray, is a servant of mammon. There are 
men in this town who love and trust their horses more than 
the God that made them and their horses too. None the 
less confidently will they give judgment on the doctrine of 
God. But the opinion of no man who does not render back 
his soul to the living God and live in Him, is, in religion, 
worth the splinter of a straw. Friends, cast your idol into 
the furnace ; melt your mammon down, coin him up, make 
God’s money of him, and send him coursing. Make of 
him cups to carry the gift of God, the water of life, through 
the world — in lovely justice to the oppressed, in healthful 
labor to them whom no man hath hired, in rest to the 
weary who have borne the burden and heat of the day, in 
joy to the heavy-hearted, in laughter to the dull-spirited. 
Let them all be glad with reason, and merry without revel. 
Ah ! what gifts in music, in drama, in the tale, in the pic- 
ture, in the spectacle, in books and models, in flowers and 
friendly feasting, what true gifts might not the mammon of 
unrighteousness, changed back into the money of God, give 
to men and women, bone of our bone, and flesh of our 
flesh ! How would you not spend yoar money for the 
Lord, if He needed it at your hand ! He does need it ; 
for he that spends it upon the least of his fellows, spends it 
upon his Lord. To hold fast upon God with one hand, and 
open wide the other to your neighbor — that is religion ; 
that is the law and the prophets, and the true way to all 
better things that are yet to come. — Lord, defend us from 


PAUL FABER. 


35 


Mammon. Hold Thy temple against his foul invasion. 
Purify our money with Thy air, and Thy sun, that it may 
be our slave, and Thou our Master. Amen.” 

The moment his sermon was ended, the curate always set 
himself to forget it. This for three reasons : first, he was so 
dissatisfied with it, that to think of it was painful — and the 
more, that many things he might have said, and many bet- 
ter ways of saying what he had said, would constantly pre- 
sent themselves. Second, it was useless to brood over what 
could not be bettered ; and, third, it was hurtful, inasmuch 
as it prevented the growth of new, hopeful, invigorating 
thought, and took from his strength, and the quality of his 
following endeavor. A man’s labors must pass like the sun- 
rises and sunsets of the world. The next thing, not the 
last, must be his care. When he reached home, he would 
therefore use means to this end of diversion, and not unfre- 
quently would write verses. Here are those he wrote that 
afternoon. 

LET YOUR LIGHT SO SHINE. 

Sometimes, O Lord, thou lightest in my head 
A lamp that well might Pharos all the lands ; 

Anon the light will neither burn nor spread 
Shrouded in danger gray the beacon stands. 

A Pharos ? Oh , dull brain ! Oh, poor quenched lamp, 

Under a bushel, with an earthy smell ! 

Moldering it lies, in rust and eating damp, 

While the slow oil keeps oozing from its cell ! 

For me it were enough to be a flower 

Knowing its root in thee was somewhere hid — 

To blossom at the far appointed hour. 

And fold in sleep when thou, my Nature, bid. 

But hear my brethren crying in the dark ! 

Light up my lamp that it may shine abroad. 

Fain would I cry— See, brothers ! sisters, mark ! 

This is the shining of light’s father, God. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE MANOR HOUSE DINING-ROOM. 

The rector never took his eyes off the preacher, but the 
preacher never saw him. The reason was that he dared not 
let his eyes wander in the direction of Mrs. Ramshorn ; he 
was not yet so near perfection but that the sight of her 
supercilious, unbelieving face, was a reviving cordial to the 
old Adam, whom he was so anxious to poison with love and 
prayer. Church over, the rector walked in silence, between 
the two ladies, to the Manor House. He courted no greet- 
ings from the sheep of his neglected flock as he went, and 
returned those offered with a constrained solemnity. The 
moment they stood in the hall together, and before the 
servant who had opened the door to them had quite dis- 
appeared, Mrs. Ramshorn, to the indignant consternation 
of Mrs. Bevis, who was utterly forgotten by both in the 
colloquy that ensued, turned sharp on the rector, and said, 

“ There ! what do you say to your curate now ? ” 

“ He is enough to set the whole parish by the ears,” he 
answered. 

“ I told you so, Mr. Bevis ! ” 

“ Only it does not follow that therefore he is in the wrong. 
Our Lord Himself came not to send peace on earth but a 
sword.” 

“ Irreverence ill becomes a beneficed clergyman, Mr. 
Bevis,” said Mrs. Ramshorn — who very consistently regard- 
ed any practical reference to our Lord as irrelevant, thence 
naturally as irreverent. 

“And, by Jove!” added the rector, heedless of her 
remark, and tumbling back into an old college-habit, “ I 
fear he is in the right ; and if he is, it will go hard with you 
and me at the last day, Mrs. Ramshorn.” 

“ Do you mean to say you are going to let that man turn 
every thing topsy-turvy, and the congregation out of the 
church, John Bevis ? ” 

“ I never saw such a congregation in it before, Mrs. 
Ramshorn.” 

“ It’s little better than a low-bred conventicle now, and 
what it will come to, if things go on like this, God knows.” 


PAUL FABER. 


37 


“ That ought to be a comfort,” said the rector. But I 
hardly know yet where I am. The fellow has knocked the 
wind out of me with his personalities, and I haven’t got my 
breath yet. Have you a bottle of sherry open ? ” 

Mrs. Ramshorn led the way to the dining-room, where 
the early Sunday dinner was already laid, and the decanters 
stood on the sideboard. The rector poured himself out a 
large glass of sherry, and drank it off in three mouthfuls. 

“ Such buffoonery ! such coarseness ! such vulgarity ! 
such indelicacy ! ” cried Mrs. Ramshorn, while the parson 
was still occupied with the sherry. “ Not content with talk- 
ing about himself in the pulpit, he must even talk about 
his wife ! What’s he or his wife in the house of God ? 
When his gown is on, a clergyman is neither Mr. This nor 
Mr. That any longer, but a priest of the Church of England, 
as by law established. My poor Helen ! She has thrown 
herself away upon a charlatan ! And what will become of 
her money in the hands of a man with such leveling notions, 
I dread to think.” 

“ He said something about buying friends with it,” said 
the rector. 

“ Bribery and corruption must come natural to a fellow 
who could preach a sermon like that after marrying money ! ” 
“ Why, my good madam, would you have a man turn his 
back on a girl because she has a purse in her pocket ? ” 

“ But to pretend to despise it ! And then, worst of all ! 
I don’t know whether the indelicacy or the profanity was 
the greater ! — when I think of it now, I can scarcely believe 
I really heard it ! — to offer to show his books to every 
inquisitive fool itching to know my niece’s fortune ! Well, 
she shan’t see a penny of mine — that I’m determined on.” 

“ You need not be uneasy about the books, Mrs. Ram- 
shorn. You remember the condition annexed ? ” 

“ Stuff and hypocrisy ! He’s played his game well ! But 
time will show.” 

Mr. Bevis checked his answer. He was beginning to get 
disgusted with the old cat, as he called her to himself. 

He too had made a good speculation in the hymeneo- 
money-market, otherwise he could hardly have afforded to 
give up the exercise of his profession. Mrs. Bevis had 
brought him the nice little property at Owlkirk, where, if he 
worshiped mammon — and after his curate’s sermon he was 
not at all sure he did not — he worshiped him in a very 
moderate and gentlemanly fashion. Every body liked the 


PAUL FABER. 


38 

rector, and two or three loved him a little. If it would be a 
stretch of the truth to call a man a Christian who never yet 
in his life had consciously done a thing because it was com- 
manded by Christ, he was not therefore a godless man ; 
while, through the age-long process of spiritual infiltration, 
he had received and retained much that was Christian. 

The ladies went to take off their bonnets, and their 
departure was a relief to the rector. He helped himself to 
another glass of sherry, and seated himself in the great 
easy chair formerly approved of the dean, long promoted. 
But what are easy chairs to uneasy men ? Dinner, however, 
was at hand, and that would make a diversion in favor of 
less disquieting thought. 

Mrs. Ramshorn, also, was uncomfortable — too much so to 
be relieved by taking off her bonnet. She felt, with no little 
soreness, that the rector was not with her in her deprecia- 
tion of Wingfold. She did her best to play the hostess, but 
the rector, while enjoying his dinner despite discomfort in 
the inward parts, was in a mood of silence altogether new 
both to himself and his companions. Mrs. Bevis, however, 
talked away in a soft, continuous murmur. She was a good- 
natured, gentle soul, without whose sort the world would be 
harder for many. She did not contribute much to its 
positive enjoyment, but for my part, 1 can not help being 
grateful even to a cat that will condescend to purr to me. 
But she had not much mollifying influence on her hostess, 
who snarled, and judged, and condemned, nor seemed to 
enjoy her dinner the less. When it was over, the ladies went 
to the drawing-room ; and the rector, finding his company 
unpleasant, drank but a week-day’s allowance of wine, and 
went to have a look at his horses. 

They neighed a welcome the moment his boot struck the 
stones of the yard, for they loved their master with all the 
love their strong, timid, patient hearts were as yet capable 
of. Satisfied that they were comfortable, for he found them 
busy with a large feed of oats and chaff and Indian corn, 
he threw his arm over the back of his favorite, and stood, 
leaning against her for minutes, half dreaming, half think- 
ing. As long as they were busy, their munching and 
grinding soothed him — held him at least in quiescent mood ; 
the moment it ceased, he seemed to himself to wake up out 
of a dream. In that dream, however, he had been more 
awake than any hour for long years, and had heard and 
seen many things. He patted his mare lovingly, then, with 


PAUL FABER. 39 

a faint sense of rebuked injustice, went into the horse’s stall, 
and patted and stroked him as he had never done before. 

He went into the inn, and asked for a cup of tea. He 
would have had a sleep on Mrs. Pinks’s sofa, as was his 
custom in his study — little study, alas, went on there ! — but 
he had a call to make, and must rouse himself, and that was 
partly why he had sought the inn. For Mrs. Ramshorn’s 
household was so well ordered that nothing was to be had 
out of the usual routine. It was like an American country 
inn, where, if you arrive after supper, you will most likely 
have to starve till next morning. Her servants, in fact, 
were her masters, and she dared not go into her own kitchen 
for a jug of hot water. Possibly it was her dethronement 
in her own house that made her, with a futile clutching after 
lost respect, so anxious to rule in the abbey church. As it 
was, although John Bevis and she had known each other 
long, and in some poor sense intimately, he would never in 
her house have dared ask for a cup of tea except it were on 
the table. But here was the ease of his inn, where the 
landlady herself was proud to get him what he wanted. 
She made the tea from her own caddy ; and when he had 
drunk three cups of it, washed his red face, and re-tied his 
white neck-cloth, he set out to make his call. 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE RECTORY DRAWING-ROOM. 

The call was upon his curate. It was years since he had 
entered the rectory. The people who last occupied it, he 
had scarcely known, and even during its preparation for 
Wingfold he had not gone near the place. Yet of that 
house had been his dream as he stood in his mare’s stall, 
and it was with a strange feeling he now approached it. 
Friends generally took the pleasanter way to the garden 
door, opening on the churchyard, but Mr. Bevis went round 
by the lane to the more public entrance. 

All his years with his first wife had been spent in that 
house. She was delicate when he married her, and soon 
grew sickly and suffering. One after another her children 


40 


PAUL FABER. 


died as babies. At last came one who lived, and then the 
mother began to die. She was one of those lowly women 
who apply the severity born of their creed to themselves, 
and spend only the love born of the indwelling Spirit upon 
their neighbors. She was rather melancholy, but hoped as 
much as she could, and when she could not hope did not 
stand still, but walked on in the dark. I think when the 
sun rises upon them, some people will be astonished to find 
how far they have got in the dark. 

Her husband, without verifying for himself one of the 
things it was his business to teach others, was yet held in 
some sort of communion with sacred things by his love for 
his suffering wife, and his admiration of her goodness and 
gentleness. He had looked up to her, though several 
years younger than himself, with something of the same 
reverence with which he had regarded his mother, a women 
with an element of greatness in her. It was not possible 
he should ever have adopted her views, or in any active 
manner allied himself with the school whose doctrines she 
accepted as the logical embodiment of the gospel, but there 
was in him all the time a vague something that was not far 
from the kingdom of heaven. Some of his wife’s friends 
looked upon him as a wolf in the sheepfold ; he was no wolf, 
he was only a hireling. Any neighborhood might have 
been the better for having such a man as he for the parson 
of the parish — only, for one commissioned to be in the 
world as he was in the world ! — why he knew more about 
the will of God as to a horse’s legs, than as to the heart 
of a man. As he drew near the house, the older and ten- 
derer time came to meet him, and the spirit of his suffering, 
ministering wife seemed to overshadow him. Two tears 
grew half-way into his eyes : — they were a little bloodshot, 
but kind, true eyes. He was not sorry he had married 
again, for he and his wife were at peace with each other, 
but he had found that the same part of his mind would not 
serve to think of the two : they belonged to different zones 
of his unexplored world. For one thing, his present wife 
looked up to him with perfect admiration, and he, knowing 
his own poverty, rather looked down upon her :n conse- 
quence, though in a loving, gentle, and gentlemanlike way. 

He was shown into the same room, looking out on the 
churchyard, where in the first months of his married life, he 
sat and heard his wife sing her few songs, accompanying 
them on the little piano he had saved hard to buy for her. 


PAUL FABER. 


41 


until she made him love them. It had lasted only through 
those few months ; after her first baby died, she rarely sang. 
But all the colors and forms of the room were different, and 
that made it easier to check the lump rising in his throat. 
It was the faith of his curate that had thus set his wife 
before him, although the two would hardly have agreed in 
any confession narrower than the Apostles’ creed. 

When Wingfold entered the room, the rector rose, went 
halfway to meet him, and shook hands with him heartily. 
They seated themselves, and a short silence followed. But 
the rector knew it was his part to speak. 

“ I was in church this morning,” he said, with a half- 
humorous glance right into the clear gray eyes of his curate. 

“ So my wife tells me,” returned Wingfold with a smile. 

“You didn’t know it then?” rejoined the rector, with 
now an almost quizzical glance, in which hovered a little 
doubt. “ I thought you were preaching at me all the time.” 

“ God forbid ! ” said the curate ; “ I was not aware of 
your presence. I did not even know you were in the town 
yesterday.” 

“You must have had some one in your mind’s eye. No 
man could speak as you did this morning, who addressed 
mere abstract humanity.” 

“ I will not say that individuals did not come up before 
me ; how can a man help it where he knows every body in 
his congregation more or less ? But I give you my word, 
sir, I never thought of you.” 

“ Then you might have done so with the greatest pro- 
priety,” returned the rector. “ My conscience sided with 
you all the time. You found me out. I’ve got a bit of the 
muscle they call a heart left in me yet, though it has got 
rather leathery. — But what do they mean when they say 
you are setting the parish by the ears ?” 

“ I don’t know, sir. I have heard of no quarreling. I 
have made some enemies, but they are not very dangerous, 
and I hope not very bitter ones ; and I have made many 
more friends, I am sure.” 

“ What they tell me is, that your congregation is divided 
— that they take sides for and against you, which is a most 
undesirable thing, surely ! ” 

“ It is indeed ; and yet it may be a thing that, for a 
time, can not be helped. Was there ever a man with the 
cure of souls, concerning whom there has not been more or 
less of such division ? But, if you will have patience with 


42 


PAUL FABER. 


me, sir, I am bold to say, believing in the force and. final 
victory of the truth, there will be more unity by and by.” 

I don’t doubt it. But come now ! — you are a thoroughly 
good fellow — that, a blind horse could see in the dimmits — 
and I’m accountable for the parish — couldn’t you draw it a 
little milder, you know ? couldn’t you make it just a little 
less peculiar — only the way of putting it, I mean — so that 
it should look a little more like what they have been used 
to ? I’m only suggesting the thing, you know — dictating 
nothing, on my soul, Mr. Wingfold. I am sure that, what- 
ever you do, you will act according to your own conscience, 
otherwise I should not venture to say a word, lest I should 
lead you wrong.” 

“ If you will allow me,” said the curate, “ I will tell you 
my whole story ; and then if you should wish it, I will 
resign my curacy, without saying a word more than that my 
rector thinks it better. Neither in private shall I make a 
single remark in a different spirit.” 

Let me hear,” said the rector. 

Then if you will please take this chair, that I may 
know that I am not wearying you bodily at least.” 

The rector did as he was requested, laid his head back, 
crossed his legs, and folded his hands over his worn waist- 
coat : he was not one of the neat order of parsons ; he had 
a not unwholesome disregard of his outermost man, and 
did not know when he was shabby. Without an atom of 
pomposity or air rectorial, he settled himself to listen. 

Condensing as much as he could. Wingfold told him how 
through great doubt, and dismal trouble of mind, he had 
come to hope in God, and to see that there was no choice 
for a man but to give himself, heart, and soul, and body, to 
the love, and will, and care of the Being who had made him. 
He could no longer, he said, regard his profession as any 
thing less than a call to use every means and energy at his 
command for the rousing of men and women from that 
spiritual sleep and moral carelessness in which he had him- 
self been so lately sunk. 

I don’t want to give up my curacy,” he concluded. 
“ Still less do I want to leave Glaston, for there are here 
some whom I teach and some who teach me. In all that 
has given ground for complaint, I have seemed to myself 
to be but following the dictates of common sense ; if you 
think me wrong, I have no justification to offer. We both 
love God, ” 


PAUL FABER. 


43 


How do you know that ? ” interrupted the rector. “ I 
wish you could make me sure of that.” 

“ I do, I know I do,” said the curate earnestly. “ I can 
say no more.” 

“ My dear fellow, I haven’t the merest shadow of a doubt 
of it,” returned the rector, smiling. What I wished was, 
that you could make me sure / do.” 

“ Pardon me, my dear sir, but, judging from sore experi- 
ence, if I could I would rather make you doubt it ; the 
doubt, even if an utter mistake, would in the end be so much 
more profitable than any present conviction.” 

“ You have your wish, then. Wingfold : I doubt it very 
much,” replied the rector. “ I must go home and think 
about it all. You shall hear from me in a day or two.” 

As he spoke Mr. Bevis rose, and stood for a moment like 
a man greatly urged to stretch his arms and legs. An air 
of uneasiness pervaded his whole appearance. 

“ Will you not stop and take tea with us ? ” said the 
curate. “ My wife will be disappointed if you do not. You 
have been good to her for twenty years, she says.” 

“ She makes an old man of me,” returned the rector 
musingly. “ I remember her such a tiny thing in a white 
frock and curls. Tell her what we have been talking about, 
and beg her to excuse me. I must go home.” 

He took his hat from the table, shook hands with Wing- 
fold, and walked back to the inn. There he found his 
horses bedded, and the hostler away. His coachman was 
gone too, nobody knew whither. 

To sleep at the inn would have given pointed offense, but 
he would rather have done so than go back to the Manor 
House to hear his curate abused. With the help of the 
barmaid, he put the horses to the carriage himself, and to 
the astonishment of Mrs. Ramshorn and his wife, drew up 
at the door of the Manor House. 

Expostulation on the part of the former was vain. The 
latter made none : it was much the same to Mrs. Bevis 
where she was, so long as she was with her husband. 
Indeed few things were more pleasant to her than sitting 
in the carriage alone, contemplating the back of Mr. Bevis 
on the box, and the motion of his elbows as he drove. 
Mrs. Ramshorn received their adieux very stiffly, and never 
after mentioned the rector without adding the epithet, 

poor man ! ” 

Mrs. Bevis enjoyed the drive ; Mr. Bevis did not. The 


44 


PAUL FABER. 


doubt was growing stronger and stronger all the way, that 
he had not behaved like a gentleman in his relation to the 
head of the church. He had naturally, as I have already 
shown, a fine, honorable, boyish if not childlike nature ; and 
the eyes of his mind were not so dim with good living as one 
might have feared from the look of those in his head : in 
the glass of loyalty he now saw himself a defaulter ; in the 
scales of honor he weighed and found himself wanting. Of 
true discipleship was not now the question : he had not 
behaved like an honorable gentleman to Jesus Christ. It 
was only in a spasm of terror St. Peter had denied him : 
John Bevis had for nigh forty years been taking his pay, 
and for the last thirty at least had done nothing in return. 
Either Jesus Christ did not care, and then what was the 
church ? — what the whole system of things called Chris- 
tianity? — or he did care, and what then was John Bevis in 
the eyes of his Master ? When they reached home, he 
went neither to the stable nor the study, but, without even 
lighting a cigar, walked out on the neighboring heath, 
where he found the universe rather gray about him. When 
he returned he tried to behave as usual, but his wife saw 
that he scarcely ate at supper, and left half of his brandy 
and water. She set it down to the annoyance the curate 
had caused him, and wisely forbore troubling him with 
questions. 


CHAPTER X. 

MR. drake’s arbor. 

While the curate was preaching that same Sunday morn- 
ing, in the cool cavernous church, with its great lights 
overhead, Walter Drake — the old minister, he was now 
called by his disloyal congregation — sat in a little arbor 
looking out on the river that flowed through the town to 
the sea. Green grass went down from where he sat to the 
very water’s brink. It was a spot the old man loved, for 
there his best thoughts came to him. There was in him a 
good deal of the stuff of which poets are made, and since 
trouble overtook him, the river had more and more gathered 
to itself the aspect of that in the Pilgrim’s Progress ; and 


PAUL FABER. 


45 


often, as he sat thus almost on its edge, he fancied himself 
waiting the welcome summoms to go home. It was a tidal 
river, with many changes. Now it flowed with a full, calm 
current, conquering the tide, like life sweeping death with 
it down into the bosom of the eternal. Now it seemed to 
stand still, as if aghast at the inroad of the awful thing ; 
and then the minister would bethink himself that it was the 
tide of the eternal rising in the narrow earthly channel : 
men, he said to himself, called it deaths because they did 
not know what it was, or the loveliness of its quickening 
energy. It fails on their sense by the might of its grand 
excess, and they call it by the name of its opposite. A 
weary and rather disappointed pilgrim, he thus comforted 
himself as he sat. 

There a great salmon rose and fell, gleaming like a bolt 
of silver in the sun ! There a little waterbeetle scurried 
along after some invisible prey. The blue smoke of his pipe 
melted in the Sabbath air. The softened sounds of a sing- 
ing congregation came across gardens and hedges to his 
ear. They sang with more energy than grace, and, not for 
the first time, he felt they did. Were they indeed singing 
to the Lord, he asked himself, or only to the idol Custom ? 
A silence came : the young man in the pulpit was giving out 
his text, and the faces that had turned themselves up to 
Walter Drake as flowers to the sun, were now all turning to 
the face of him they had chosen in his stead, “ to minister 
to them in holy things.” He took his pipe from his mouth, 
and sat motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground. 

But why was he not at chapel himself ? Could it be that 
he yielded to temptation, actually preferring his clay pipe 
and the long glide of the river, to the worship, and the 
hymns and the sermon ? Had there not been a time when 
he judged that man careless of the truth who did not go to 
the chapel, and that man little better who went to the 
church ? Yet there he sat on a Sunday morning, the church 
on one side of him and the chapel on the other, smoking his 
pipe ! His daughter was at the chapel ; she had taken 
Ducky with her ; the dog lay in the porch waiting for them ; 
the cat thought too much of herself to make friends with 
her master ; he had forgotten his New Testament on the 
study table ; and now he had let his pipe out. 

He was not well, it is true, but he was well enough to have 
gone. Was he too proud to be taught where he had been 
a teacher ? or was it that the youth in his place taught there 


PAUL FABER. 


46 

doctrines which neither they nor their fathers had known ? 
It could not surely be from resentment that they had super- 
annuated him in the prime of his old age, with a pared third 
of his late salary, which nothing but honesty in respect to 
the small moneys he owed could have prevented him from 
refusing ! 

In truth it was impossible the old minister should have 
any great esteem for the flashy youth, proud of his small 
Latin and less Greek, a mere unit of the hundreds whom 
the devil of ambition drives to preaching ; one who, whether 
the doctrines he taught were in the New Testament or not, 
certainly never found them there, being but the merest dis- 
ciple of a disciple of a disciple, and fervid in words of 
which he perceived scarce a glimmer of the divine purport. 
At the same time, he might have seen points of resemblance 
between his own early history and that of I he callow chirper 
of divinity now holding forth from his pulpit, which might 
have tended to mollify his judgment with sympathy. 

His people had behaved ill to him, and he could not say 
he was free from resentment or pride, but he did make for 
them what excuse lay in the fact that the congregation had 
been dwindling ever since the curate at the abbey-church 
began to speak in such a strange outspoken fashion. There 
now was a right sort of man ! he said to himself. No 
attempted oratory with him ! no prepared surprises ! no 
playhouse tricks ! no studied graces in wafture of hands and 
upheaved eyes ! And yet at moments when he became 
possessed with his object rather than subject, every inch of 
him seemed alive. He was odd — very odd ; perhaps he was 
crazy — but at least he was honest. He had heard him him- 
self, and judged him well worth helping to what was better, 
for, alas ! notwithstanding the vigor of his preaching, he did 
not appear to have himself discovered as yet the treasure 
hid in the field. He was, nevertheless, incomparably the 
superior of the young man whom, expecting him to d7'a7v, 
the deacons of his church, with the members behind them, 
had substituted for himself, who had for more than fifteen 
years ministered to them the bread of life. 

Bread ! — Yes, I think it might honestly be called bread 
that Walter Drake had ministered. It had not been free 
from chalk or potatoes : bits of shell and peel might have 
l)een found in it, with an occasional bit of dirt, and a hair or 
two ; yes, even a little alum, and that isbad^ because it tends 
to destroy, not satisfy the hunger. There was sawdust in it, 


PAUL FABER. 


47 


and parchment-dust, and lumber-dust ; it was ill salted, 
badly baked, sad ; sometimes it was blue-moldy, and some- 
times even maggoty ; but the mass of it was honest flour, 
and those who did not recoil from the look of it, or recog- 
nize the presence of the variety of foreign matter, could 
live upon it, in a sense, up to a certain pitch of life. But a 
great deal of it was not of his baking at all — he had been 
merely the distributor — crumbling down other bakers’ loaves 
and making them up again in his own shapes. In his de- 
clining years, however, he had been really beginning to 
learn the business. Only, in his congregation were many 
who not merely preferred bad bread of certain kinds, but 
were incapable of digesting any of high quality. 

He would have gone to chapel that morning had the 
young man been such as he could respect. Neither his doc- 
trine, nor the behavior of the church to himself, would have 
kept him away. Had he followed his inclination he would 
have gone to the church, only that would have looked spite- 
ful. His late congregation would easily excuse his non-attend- 
ance with them ; they would even pitifully explain to each 
other why he could not appear just yet ; but to go to church 
would be in their eyes unpardonable — a declaration of a 
war of revenge. 

There was, however, a reason berides, why Mr. Drake 
could not go to church that morning, and if not a more 
serious, it was a much more painful one. Some short time 
before he had any ground to suspect that his congregation 
was faltering in its loyalty to him, his daughter had dis- 
covered that the chapel butcher, when he sent a piece of 
meat, invariably charged for a few ounces beyond the 
weight delivered. Now Mr. Drake was a man of such hon- 
esty that all kinds of cheating, down to the most respectable, 
were abominable to him ; that the man was a professor of 
religion made his conduct unpardonable in his eyes, ^nd that; 
he was one of his own congregation rendered it insupporta-. 
ble. Having taken pains to satisfy himself of the fact, he 
declined to deal with him any further, and did not spare to 
tell him why. The man was far too dishonest to profit by 
the rebuke save in circumspection and cunning, was re- 
vengeful in proportion to the justice of the accusation, and 
of course brought his influence, which was not small, to 
bear upon the votes of the church-members in respect of 
the pastorate. 

Had there been another butcher in connection with the 


48 


PAUL FABER. 


chapel, Mr. Drake would have turned to him, but as there 
was not, and they could not go without meat, he had to be- 
take himself to the principal butcher in the place, who was 
a member of the Church of England. Soon after his 
troubles commenced, and before many weeks were over he 
saw plainly enough that he must either resign altogether, 
and go out into the great world of dissent in search of some 
pastorless flock that might vote him their crook, to be 
guided by him whither they wanted to go, and whither most 
of them believed they knew the way as well as he, or accept 
the pittance offered him. This would be to retire from the 
forefront of the battle, and take an undistinguished place 
in the crowd of mere camp-followers ; but, for the sake of 
honesty, as I have already explained, and with the hope 
that it might be only for a brief season, he had chosen the 
latter half of the alternative. And truly it was a great re- 
lief not to have to grind out of his poor, weary, groaning 
mill the two inevitable weekly sermons — labor sufficient to 
darken the face of nature to the conscientious man. For 
his people thought themselves intellectual, and certainly were 
critical. Mere edification in holiness was not enough for 
them. A large infusion of some polemic element was 
necessary to make the meat savory and such as their souls 
loved. Their ambition was not to grow in grace, but in 
social influence and regard — to glorify their dissent, not the 
communion of saints. Upon the chief corner-stone they 
would build their stubble of paltry religionism ; they would 
set up their ragged tent in the midst of the eternal temple, 
careless how it blocked up window and stair. 

Now last week Mr. Drake had requested his new butcher 
to send his bill — with some little anxiety, because of the 
sudden limitation of his income ; but when he saw it he was 
filled with horror. Amounting only to a very few pounds, 
causes had come together to make it a large one in compar- 
ison with the figures he was accustomed to see. Alwavs 
feeding some of his flock, he had at this time two sickly, 
nursing mothers who drew their mortal iife from his kitch- 
en ; and, besides, the doctor had, some time ago, ordered a 
larger amount of animal food for the little Amanda. In fine, 
the sum at the bottom of that long slip of paper, with the 
wood-cut of a prize ox at the top of it, small as he would 
have thought it at one period of his history, was greater than 
he could imagine how to pay ; and if he went to church. 
It would be tc feei the eye of the butcher and not that of the 


PAUL FABER. 


49 


curate upon him all the time. It was a dismay, a horror to 
him to have an account rendered which he could not settle, 
and especially from his new butcher, after he had so severely 
rebuked the old one. Where was the mighty difference 
in honesty between himself and the offender ? the one 
claimed for meat he had not sold, the other ordered that for 
which he could not pay ! Would not Mr. Jones imagine he 
had left his fellow-butcher and come to him because he had 
run up a large bill for which he was unable to write a check ? 
This was that over which the spirit of the man now brooded 
by far the most painfully ; this it was that made him leave 
his New Testament in the study, let his pipe out, and look 
almost lovingly upon the fast-flowing river, because it was a 
symbol of death. 

He had chosen preaching as a profession, just as so 
many take orders — with this difference from a large pro- 
portion of such, that he had striven powerfully to convince 
himself that he trusted in the merits of the Redeemer. 
Had he not in this met with tolerable success, he would not 
have yielded to the wish of his friends and left his father’s 
shop in his native country-town for a dissenting college in 
the neighborhood of London. There he worked well, and 
became a good scholar, learning to read in the true sense of 
the word, that is, to try the spirits as he read. His charac- 
ter, so called, was sound, and his conscience, if not sensi- 
tive, was firm and regnant. But he was injured both spirit- 
ually and morally by some of the instructions there given. 
For one of the objects held up as duties before him, was to 
become capable of rendering himself acceptable to a congre- 
gation. 

Most of the students were but too ready to regard, or at 
least to treat this object as the first and foremost of duties. 
The master-duty of devotion to Christ, and obedience to 
every word that proceeded out of His mouth, was very 
much treated as a thing understood, requiring little enforce- 
ment ; while, the main thing demanded of them being ser- 
mons in some sense their own — honey culled at least by 
their own bees, and not bought in jars, much was said about 
the plan and composition of sermons, about style and elo- 
cution, and action — all plainly and confessedly, with a view 
to pulpit-success — the lowest of ail low successes, and the 
most worldly. 

These instructions Walter Drake accepted as the wisdom 
of the holy serpent — devoted large attention to composition, 


PAUL FABER. 


SO 

labored to form his style on the best models^ and before begin- 
ning to write a sermon, always heated the furnace of pro- 
duction with fuel from some exciting or suggestive author : 
it would be more correct to say, fed the mill of composition 
from some such source ; one consequence of all which was, 
that when at last, after many years, he did begin to develop 
some individuality, he could not, and never did shake him- 
self free of those weary models ; his thoughts, appearing in 
clothes which were not made for them, v^ore always a cer- 
tain stiffness and unreality which did not by nature belong 
to them, blunting the impressions which his earnestness and 
sincerity did notwithstanding make. 

Determined to succeed^ he cultivated eloquence also — 
what he supposed eloquence, that is, being, of course, merely 
elocution, to attain the right gestures belonging to which 
he looked far more frequently into his landlady’s mirror, 
than for his spiritual action into the law of liberty. He 
had his reward in the success he sought. But I must make 
haste, for the story of worldly success is always a mean tale. 
In a few years, and for not a few after, he was a popular 
preacher in one of the suburbs of London — a good deal 
sought after, and greatly lauded. He lived in comfort, 
indulged indeed in some amount of show ; married a widow 
with a large life-annuity, which between them they spent 
entirely, and that not altogether in making friends with 
everlasting habitations ; in a word, gazed out on the social 
landscape far oftener than lifted his eyes to the hills. 

After some ten or twelve years, a change began. They 
had three children ; the two boys, healthy and beautiful, 
took scarlatina and died ; the poor, sickly girl wailed on. 
His wife, v/ho had always been more devoted to her chil- 
dren than her husband, pined, and died also. Her money 
went, if not with her, yet away from him. His spirits began 
to fail him, and his small, puny, peaking daughter did not 
comfort him much. He was capable of true, but not yet of 
pure love ; at present his love was capricious. Little Dora 
— a small Dorothy indeed in his estimation — had always 
been a better child than either of her brothers, but he loved 
them the more that others admired them, and her the 
less that others pitied her: he did try to love her, 
for there was a large element of justice in his nature. 
This, but for his being so much occupied with 7naking hh 7 i~ 
self acceptable to his congregation, would have given him a 
leadership in the rising rebellion against a theology which 


PAUL FABER. 


51 


'crushed the hearts of men by attributing injustice to their 
God. As it was, he lay at anchor, and let the tide rush 
■past him. 

Further change followed — gradual, but rapid. His con- 
'gregation began to discover that he was not the man he had 
ibeen. They complained of lack of variety in his preaching ; 
said he took it too easy; did not study his sermons sufficiently; 
often spoke extempore, which was a poor compliment to 
them ; did not visit with impartiality, and indeed had all 
along favored the carriage people. There was a party in 
the church which had not been cordial to him from the first ; 
partly from his fault, partly from theirs, he had always 
made them feel they were of the lower grade ; and from an 
increase of shops in the neighborhood, this party was now 
gathering head. Their leaders went so far at length as to 
hint at a necessity for explanation in regard to the accounts 
of certain charities administered by the pastor. In these, 
unhappily, laciince were patent. In his troubles the pastor 
had grown careless. But it was altogether to his own loss, 
for not merely had the money been spent with a rigidity of 
uprightness, such as few indeed of his accusers exercised in 
their business affairs, but he had in his disbursements 
exceeded the contribution committed to his charge. Con- 
fident, however, in his position, and much occupied with 
other thoughts, he had taken no care to set down the par- 
ticulars of his expenditure, and his enemies did not fail to 
hint a connection between this fact and the loss of his wife’s 
annuity. Worst of all, doubts of his orthodoxy began to be 
expressed by the more ignorant, and harbored without 
examination by the less ignorant. 

All at once he became aware of the general disloyalty 
of his flock, and immediately resigned. Scarcely had he 
done so when he was invited to Glaston, and received with 
open arms. There he would heal his wounds, and spend 
the rest of his days in peace. He caught a slip or two ” 
in descending, but soon began to find the valley of humilia- 
tion that wholesome place which all true pilgrims have ever 
declared it. Comparative retirement, some sense of lost 
labor, some suspicion of the worth of the ends for which he 
had spent his strength, a waking desire after the God in 
whom he had vaguely believed all the time he was letting 
the dust of paltry accident inflame his eyes, blistering and 
deadening his touch with the efflorescent crusts and agaric 
tumors upon the dry bones of theology, gilding the vane of 


52 


PAUL FABER. 


bis chapel instead of cleansing its porch and its floor — these 
all favored the birth in his mind of the question, whether 
he had ever entered in at the straight gate himself, or had 
not merely been standing by its side calling to others to 
enter in. Was it even as well as this with him ? Had he 
not been more intent on gathering a wretched flock within 
the rough, wool-stealing, wind-sifting, beggarly hurdles of 
his church, than on housing true men and women safe in 
the fold of the true Shepherd ? Feeding troughs for the 
sheep there might be many in the fields, and they might or 
might not be presided over by servants of the true Shep- 
herd, but the fold they were not ! He grew humble before 
the Master, and the Master began to lord it lovingly over 
him. He sought His presence, and found Him ; began to 
think less of books and rabbis, yea even, for the time, of 
Paul and Apollos and Cephas, and to pore and ponder over 
the living tale of the New Covenant ; began to feel that the 
Lord meant what He .said, and that His apostles also meant 
what He said ; forgot Calvin a good deal, outgrew the 
influences of Jonathan Edwards, and began to understand 
Jesus Christ. 

Few sights can be lovelier than that of a man who, hav- 
ing rushed up the staircase of fame in his youth — what 
matter whether the fame of a paltry world, or a paltry sect 
of that world ! — comes slowly, gently, graciously down in 
his old age, content to lose that which he never had, and 
careful only to be honest at last. It had not been so with 
Walter Drake. He had to come down first to begin to get 
the good of it, but once down, it was not long ere he began 
to go up a very different stair indeed. A change took 
place in him which turned all aims, all efforts, all victories 
of the world, into the merest, most poverty-stricken trifling. 
He had been a tarrer and smearer, a marker and shearer of 
sheep, rather than a pastor ; but now he recognized the rod 
and leaned on the staff of the true Shepherd Who feeds 
both shepherds and sheep. Hearty were the thanks he 
offered that he had been staid in his worse than foolish 
career. 

Since then, he had got into a hollow in the valley, and at 
this moment, as he sat in his summer-house, was looking 
from a verge abrupt into what seemed a bottomless gulf of 
humiliation. For his handsome London house, he had little 
better than a cottage, in which his study was not a quarter 
of the size of the one he had left ; he had sold two-thirds 


PAUL FABER. 


53 


of his books ; for three men and four women servants, he 
had but one old woman and his own daughter to do the 
work of the house ; for all quadrupedal menie, he had but 
a nondescript canine and a contemptuous feline foundling ; 
from a devoted congregation of comparatively educated 
people, he had sunk to one in which there was not a person 
of higher standing than a tradesman, and that congregation 
had now rejected him as not up to their mark, turning him 
off to do his best with fifty pounds a year. He had himself 
heard the cheating butcher remark in the open street that 
it was quite enough, and more than ever his Master had. 
But all these things were as nothing in his eyes beside his 
inability to pay Mr. Jones’s bill. He had outgrown his for- 
mer self, but this kind of misery it would be but deeper 
degradation to outgrow. All before this had been but 
humiliation ; this was shame. Now first he knew what 
poverty was ! Had God forgotten him ? That could not 
be ! that which could forget could not be God. Did he 
not care then that such things should befall his creatures ? 
Were they but trifles in his eyes ? He ceased thinking, 
gave way to the feeling that God dealt hardly with him, 
and sat stupidly indulging a sense of grievance — with self- 
pity, than which there is scarce one more childish or enfeeb- 
ling in the whole circle of the emotions. Was this what 
God had brought him nearer to Himself for? was this the 
end of a ministry in which he had, in some measure at least, 
denied himself and served God and his fellow ? He could 
bear any thing but shame ! That too could he have borne 
had he not been a teacher of religion — one who^se failure 
must brand him a hypocrite. How mean it would sound — 
what a reproach to the cause^ that the congregational minis- 
ter had run up a bill with a church-butcher which he was 
unable to pay ! It was the shame — the shame he could not 
bear ! Ought he to have been subjected to it ? 

A humbler and better mood slowly dawned with uncon- 
scious change, and he began to ponder with himself wherein 
he had been misusing the money given him : either he had 
been misusing it, or God had not given him enough, seeing 
it would not reach the end of his needs ; but he could think 
only of the poor he had fed, and the child he had adopted, 
and surely God would overlook those points of extrava- 
gance. Still, if he had not the means, he had not the right 
to do such things. It might not in itself be wrong, but in 
respect of him it was as dishonest as if he had spent the 


54 


PAUL FABER. 


money on himself — not to mention that it was a thwarting 
of the counsel of God, who, if He had meant them to be so 
aided, would have sent him the money to spend upon them 
honestly. His one excuse was that he could not have fore- 
seen how soon his income was going to shrink to a third. 
In future he would withhold his hand. But surely he might 
keep the child ? Nay, having once taken her in charge, he 
must keep the child. It was a comfort, there could be no 
doubt about that. God had money enough, and certainly 
He would enable him to do that ! Only, why then did He 
bring him to such poverty ? 

So round in his mill he went, round and round again, and 
back to the old evil mood. Either there was no God, or he 
was a hard-used man, whom his Master did not mind bring- 
ing to shame before his enemies ! He could not tell which 
would triumph the more — the church-butcher over dissent, 
or the chapel-butcher over the church-butcher, and the pas- 
tor who had rebuked him for dishonesty ! His very soul 
was disquieted within him. He rose at last with a tear 
trickling down his cheek, and walked to and fro in his 
garden. 

Things went on nevertheless as if all was right with the 
world. The Lythe flowed to the sea, and the silver-mailed 
salmon leaped into the more limpid air. The sun shone 
gracious over all his kingdom, and his little praisers were 
loud in every bush. The primroses, earth-born suns, were 
shining about in every border. The sound of the great 
organ came from the grand old church, and the sound of 
many voices from the humble chapel. Only, where was the 
heart of it all ? 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE CHAMBER AT THE COTTAGE. 

Meanwhile Faber was making a round, with the village 
of Owlkirk for the end of it. Ere he was half-way thither, 
his groom was tearing after him upon Niger, with a message 
from Mrs. Puckridge, which, however, did not overtake him. 
He opened the cottage-door, and walked up stairs, expect- 
ing to find his patient weak, but in the fairest of ways to 


PAUL FABER. 


55 


recover speedily. What was his horror to see her landlady 
weeping and wringing her hands over the bed, and find the 
lady lying motionless, with bloodless lips and distended 
nostrils — to all appearance dead ! Pillows, sheets, blankets, 
looked one mass of red. The bandage had shifted while 
she slept, and all night her blood had softly flowed. Hers 
was one of those peculiar organizations in which, from some 
cause but dimly conjectured as yet, the blood once set flow- 
ing will flow on to death, and even the tiniest wound is hard 
to stanch. Was the lovely creature gone ? In her wrist he 
could discern no pulse. He folded back the bed-clothes, and 
laid his ear to her heart. His whole soul listened. Yes; 
there was certainly the faintest flutter. He watched a 
moment : yes ; he could see just the faintest tremor of the 
diaphragm. 

“ Run,” he cried, — for God’s sake run and bring me a 
jug of hot water, and two or three basins. There is just a 
chance yet ! If you make haste, we may save her. Bring 
me a syringe. If you haven’t one, run from house to house 
till you get one. Her life depends on it.” By this time he 
was shouting after the hurrying landlady. 

In a minute or two she returned. 

“ Have you got the syringe ? ” he cried, the moment he 
heard her step. 

To his great relief she had. He told her to wash it out 
thoroughly with the hot water, unscrew the top, and take 
out the piston. While giving his directions, he unbound 
the arm, enlarged the wound in the vein longitudinally, and 
re-bound the arm tight below the elbow, then quickly 
opened a vein of his own, and held the syringe to catch the 
spout that followed. When it was full, he replaced the 
piston, telling Mrs. Puckridge to put her thumb on his 
wound, turned the point of the syringe up and drove a little 
out to get rid of the air, then, with the help of a probe, 
inserted the nozzle into the wound, and gently forced in the 
blood. That done, he placed his own thumbs on the two 
wounds, and made the woman wash out the syringe in clean 
hot water. Then he filled it as before, and again forced 
its contents into the lady’s arm. This process he went 
through repeatedly. Then, listening, he found her heart 
beating quite perceptibly, though irregularly. Her breath 
was faintly coming and going. Several times more he 
repeated the strange dose, then ceased, and was occupied in 
binding up her arm, when she gave a great shuddering 


56 


PAUL FABER. 


sigh. By the time he had finished, the pulse was percepti- 
ble at her wrist. Last of all he bound up his own wound, 
from which had escaped a good deal beyond what he had 
used. While thus occupied, he turned sick, and lay down 
on the floor. Presently, however, he grew able to crawl 
from the room, and got into the garden at the back of the 
house, where he walked softly to the little rude arbor at the 
end of it, and sat down as if in a dream. But in the dream 
his soul felt wondrously awake. He had been tasting death 
from the same cup with the beautiful woman who lay there, 
coming alive with his life. A terrible weight was heaved 
from his bosom. If she had died, he would have felt, all 
his life long, that he had sent one of the loveliest of 
Nature’s living dreams back to the darkness and the worm, 
long years before her time, and with the foam of the cup of 
life yet on her lips. Then a horror seized him at the pre- 
sumptuousness of the liberty he had taken. What if the 
beautiful creature would rather have died than have the 
blood of a man, one she neither loved nor knew, in her 
veins, and coursing through her very heart ! She must 
never know it. 

“ I am very grateful,” he said to himself ; then smiled and 
wondered to whom he was grateful. 

“ How the old stamps and colors come out in the brain 
when one least expects it ! ” he said. “ What I meant was, 
How glad I am ! ” 

Honest as he was, he did not feel called upon to examine 
whether glad was really the word to represent the feeling 
which the thought of what he had escaped, and of the 
creature he had saved from death, had sent up into his con- 
sciousness. Glad he was indeed ! but was there not 
mingled with his gladness a touch of something else, very 
slight, yet potent enough to make him mean grateful when 
the word broke from him ? and if there was such a some- 
thing, where did it come from ? Perhaps if he had caught 
and held the feeling, and submitted it to such a searching 
scrutiny as he was capable of giving it, he might have 
doubted whether any mother-instilled superstition ever 
struck root so deep as the depth from which that seemed at 
least to come. I merely suggest it. The feeling was a 
faint and poor one, and I do not care to reason from it. I 
would not willingly waste upon small arguments, when I see 
more and more clearly that our paltriest faults and dishon- 
esties need one and the same enormous cure. 


PAUL FABER. 


57 


But indeed never had Faber less time to examine himself 
than now, had he been so inclined. With that big wound 
in it, he would as soon have left a shell in the lady's 
chamber with the fuse lighted, as her arm to itself. He did 
not leave the village all day. He went to see another 
patient in it, and one on its outskirts, but he had his dinner 
at the little inn where he put up Ruber, and all night long 
he sat by the bedside of his patient. There the lovely white 
face, blind like a statue that never had eyes, and the per- 
fect arm, which now and then, with a restless, uneasy, feeble 
toss, she would fling over the counterpane, the arm he had 
to watch as the very gate of death, grew into his heart. He 
dreaded the moment when she would open her eyes, and 
his might no longer wander at will over her countenance. 
Again and again in the night he put a hand under her head, 
and held a cooling draught to her lips ; but not even when 
she drank did her eyes open : like a child too weak to trust 
itself, therefore free of all anxiety and fear, she took what- 
ever came, questioning nothing. He sat at the foot of the 
bed, where, with the slightest movement, he could, through 
the opening of the curtains, see her perfectly. 

By some change of position, he had unknowingly drawn 
one of them back a little from between her and him, as he 
sat thinking about her. The candle shone full upon his 
face, but the other curtain was between the candle and his 
patient. Suddenly she opened her eyes. 

A dream had been with her, and she did not yet know 
that it was gone. She could hardly be said to know any 
thing. Fever from loss of blood ; uneasiness, perhaps, from 
the presence in her system of elements elsewhere fashioned 
and strangely foreign to its economy ; the remnants of sleep 
and of the dream ; the bewilderment of sudden awaking — 
all had combined to paralyze her judgment, and give her 
imagination full career. When she opened her eyes, she 
saw a beautiful face, and nothing else, and it seemed to her 
itself the source of the light by which she saw it. Her 
dream had been one of great trouble ; and when she beheld 
the shining countenance, she thought it was the face of the 
Saviour : he was looking down upon her heart, which he 
held in his hand, and reading all that was written there. 
The tears rushed to her eyes, and the next moment Faber 
saw two fountains of light and weeping in the face which 
had been but as of loveliest marble. The curtain fell 
between them, and the lady thought the vision had vanished. 


PAUL FABER. 


S8 

The doctor came softly through the dusk to her bedside. 
He felt her pulse, looked to the bandage on her arm, gave 
her something to drink, and left the room. Presently Mrs. 
Puckridge brought her some beef tea. 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE minister’s GARDEN. 

Up and down the garden paced the pastor, stung by the 
gadflies of debt. If he were in London he could sell his 
watch and seals ; he had a ring somewhere, too — an antique, 
worth what now seemed a good deal ; but his wife had 
given him both. Besides, it would cost so much to go to 
London, and he had no money. Mr. Drew, doubtless, 
would lend him what he wanted, but he could not bring 
himself to ask him. If he parted with them in Glaston, 
they would be put in the watchmaker’s window, and that 
would be a scandal — with the Baptists making head in the 
very next street ! For, notwithstanding the heartless way 
in which the Congregationalists had treated him, theirs was 
the cause of scriptural Christianity, and it made him shudder 
to think of bringing the smallest discredit upon the denom- 
ination. The church-butcher was indeed a worse terror to 
him than Apollyon had been to Christian, for it seemed to 
his faithlessness that not even the weapon of All-prayer 
was equal to his discomfiture ; nothing could render him 
harmless but the payment of his bill. He began to look 
back with something like horror upon the sermons he had 
preached on honesty ; for how would his inability to pay 
his debts appear in the eyes of those who had heard them ? 
Oh ! why had he not paid for every thing as they had it ? 
Then when the time came that he could not pay, they would 
only have had to go without, whereas now, there was the 
bill louring at the back of the want ! 

When Miss Drake returned from the chapel, she found 
her father leaning on the sun-dial, where she had left him. 
To all appearance he had not moved. He knew her step 
but did not stir. 

“ Father ! ” she said. 


PAUL FABER. 


59 


It is a hard thing, my child,” he responded, still with- 
out moving, “ when the valley of Humiliation comes next 
the river Death, and no land of Beulah between ! I had 
my good things in my youth, and now I have my evil 
things.” 

She laid her hand on his shoulder lovingly, tenderly, 
worshipfully, but did not speak. 

“ As you see me now, my Dorothy, my God’s-gift, you 
would hardly believe your father was once a young and 
popular preacher, ha, ha ! Fool that I was ! I thought 
they prized my preaching, and loved me for what I taught 
them. I thought I was somebody ! With shame I confess 
it ! Who were they, or what was their judgment, to fool 
me in my own concerning myself ! Their praise was 
indeed a fit rock for me to build my shame upon.” 

“ But, father dear, what is even a sin when it is repented 
of?” 

“A shame forever, my child. Our Lord did not cast 
out even an apostle for his conceit and self-sufficiency, but 
he let him fall.” 

“ He has not let you fall, father ? ” said Dorothy, with 
tearful eyes. 

“ He is bringing my gray hairs with sorrow and shame to 
the grave, my child.” 

“ Why, father ! ” cried the girl, shocked, as she well might 
be, at his words, “ what have I done to make you say 
that ? ” 

Done, my darling [you done? You have done nothing 
but righteousness ever since you could do any thing ! You 
have been like a mother to your old father. It is that bill ! 
that horrid butcher’s bill ! ” 

Dorothy burst out laughing through her dismay, and 
wept and laughed together for more than a minute ere she 
could recover herself. 

“ Father ! you dear father ! you’re too good to live ! 
Why, there are forks and spoons enough in the house to pay 
that paltry bill ! — not to mention the cream-jug which is, 
and the teapot which we thought was silver, because Lady 
Sykes gave it us. Why didn’t you tell me what was 
troubling you, father dear ? ” 

“ I can’t bear — I never oou/d bear to owe money. I 
asked the man for his bill some time ago. I could have 
paid it then, though it wouldn’t have left me a pound. The 
moment I looked at it, I felt as if the Lord had forsaken 


6o 


PAUL FABER. 


me. It is easy for you to bear ; you are not the one 
accountable. I am. And if the pawnbroker or the silver- 
smith does stand between me and absolute dishonesty, yet 
to find myself in such a miserable condition, with next to 
nothing between us and the workhouse, may well make me 
doubt whether I have been a true servant of the Lord, for 
surely such shall never be ashamed ! During these last 
days the enemy has even dared to tempt me with the 
question, whether after all, these unbelievers may not be 
right, and the God that ruleth in the earth a mere pro- 
jection of what the conscience and heart bribe the imagina- 
tion to construct for them ! ” 

“ I wouldn’t think that before I was driven to it, father,” 
said Dorothy, scarcely knowing what she said, for his 
doubt shot a poisoned arrow of despair into the very heart 
of her heart. 

He, never doubting the security of his child’s faith, had no 
slightest suspicion into what a sore spot his words had car- 
ried torture. He did not know that the genius of doubt — 
shall I call him angel or demon ? — had knocked at her door, 
had called through her window ; that words dropped by 
Faber, indicating that science was against all idea of a God, 
and the confidence of their tone, had conjured up in her 
bosom hollow fears, faint dismays, and stinging questions. 
Ready to trust, and incapable of arrogance, it was hard for 
her to imagine how a man like Mr. Faber, upright and kind 
and self-denying, could say such things if he did not know 
them true. The very word science appeared to carry an 
awful authority. She did not understand that it was only 
because science had never come closer to Him than the 
mere sight of the fringe of the outermost folds of the taber- 
nacle of His presence, that her worshipers dared assert 
there was no God. She did not perceive that nothing ever 
science could find, could possibly be the God of men ; that 
science is only the human reflex of truth, and that truth 
itself can not be measured by what of it is reflected from the 
mirror of the understanding. She did not see that no 
incapacity of science to find God, even touched the matter 
of honest men’s belief that He made His dwelling with the 
humble and contrite. Nothing she had learned from her 
father either provided her with reply, or gave hope of find- 
ing argument of discomfiture ; nothing of all that went on 
at chapel or church seemed to have any thing to do with 
the questions that presented themselves. 


PAUL FABER. 


6i 


Such a rough shaking of so-called faith, has been of end- 
less service to many, chiefly by exposing the insecurity of 
all foundations of belief, save that which is discovered in 
digging with the spade of obedience. Well indeed is it for 
all honest souls to be thus shaken, who have been building 
upon doctrines concerning Christ, upon faith, upon exper- 
iences, upon any thing but Christ Himself, as revealed by 
Himself and His spirit to all who obey Him, and so reveal- 
ing the Father — a doctrine just as foolish as the rest to 
men like Faber, but the power of God and the wisdom of 
God to such who know themselves lifted out of darkness 
and an ever-present sense of something wrong — if it be 
only into twilight and hope. 

Dorothy was a gift of God, and the trouble that gnawed 
at her heart she would not let out to gnaw at her father’s. 

“ There’s Ducky come to call us to dinner,” she said, 
and rising, went to meet her. 

‘‘ Dinner ! ” groaned Mr. Drake, and would have 
remained where he was. But for Dorothy’s sake he rose 
and followed her, feeling almost like a repentant thief who 
had stolen the meal. 


CHAPTER XHI. 

THE HEATH AT NESTLEY. 

On the Monday morning, Mr. Bevis’s groom came to the 
rectory with a note for the curate, begging him and Mrs. 
Wingfold to dine at Nestley the same day if possible. 

“ I know,” the rector wrote, “ Monday is, or ought to be, 
an idle day with you, and I write instead of my wife, because 
I want to see you on business. I would have come to you, 
had I not had reasons for wishing to see you here rather 
than at Glaston. The earlier you can come and the longer 
you can stay the better, but you shall go as soon after an 
early dinner as you please. You are a bee and I am a 
drone. God bless you. John Bevis.” 

The curate took the note to his wife. Things were at 
once arranged, an answer of ready obedience committed to 
the groom, and Flelen’s pony-carriage ordered out. 


62 


PAUL FABER. 


The curate called every thing Helen’s. He had a great 
contempt for the spirit of men who marry rich wives 
and then lord it over their money, as if they had done a 
fine thing in getting hold of it, and the wife had been but 
keeping it from its rightful owner. They do not know 
what a confession their whole bearing is, that, but for their 
wives’ money, they would be but the merest, poorest nobod- 
ies. So small are they that even that suffices to make them 
feel big ! But Helen did not like it, especially when he 
would ask her if he might have this or that, or do so and 
so. Any common man who heard him would have thought 
him afraid of his wife ; but a large-hearted woman would at 
once have understood, as did Helen, that it all came of his 
fine sense of truth, and reality, and obligation. Still Helen 
would have had him forget all such matters in connection with 
her. They were one beyond obligation. She had given 
him herself, and what were bank-notes after that ? But he 
thought of her always as an angel who had taken him in, 
to comfort, and bless, and cherish him with love, that he 
might the better do the work of his God and hers ; there- 
fore his obligation to her was his glory. 

“Your ponies go splendidly to-day, Helen,” he said, as 
admiringly he watched how her hands on the reins seemed 
to mold their movements. 

They were the tiniest, daintiest things, of the smallest 
ever seen in harness, but with all the ways of big horses, 
therefore amusing in their very grace. They were the 
delight of the children of Glaston and the villages round. 

“ Why will you call them my ponies, Thomas ? ” returned 
his wife, just sufficiently vexed to find it easy to pretend to 
be cross. “ I don’t see what good I have got by marrying 
you, if every thing is to be mine all the same ! ” 

“ Don’t be unreasonable, my Helen ! ” said the curate, 
looking into the lovely eyes whose colors seemed a little 
blown about in their rings. “ Don’t you see it is my way of 
feeling to myself how much, and with what a halo about 
them, they are mine ? If I had bought them with my own 
money, I should hardly care for them. Thank God, they 
are not mine that way, or in any way like that way. You 
are mine, my life, and they are yours — mine therefore 
because they are about you like your clothes or your watch. 
They are mine as your handkerchief and your gloves are 
mine— through worshiping love. Listen to reason. If a 
thing is yours it is ten times more mine than if I had bought 


PAUL FABER. 


63 

it, for, just because it is yours, I am able to possess it as the 
meek, and not the land-owners, inherit the earth. It makes 
having such a deep and high — indeed a perfect thing ! I 
take pleasure without an atom of shame in every rich thing 
you have brought me. Do you think, if you died, and I 
carried your watch, I should ever cease to feel the watch 
was yours ? Just so they are your ponies ; and if you don’t 
like me to say so, you can contradict me every time, you 
know, all the same.” 

“ I know people will think I am like the lady we heard of 
the other day, who told her husband the sideboard was hers, 
not his. Thomas, I hate to look like the rich one, when all 
that makes life worth living for, or fit to be lived, was and 
is given me by you.” 

“ No, no, no, my darling ! don’t say that ; you terrify me. 
I was but the postman that brought you the good news.” 

“ Well ! and what else with me and the ponies and the 
money and all that ? Did I make the ponies t Or did I 
even earn the money that bought them ? It is only the 
money my father and brother have done with. Don’t make 
me look as if I did not behave like a lady to my own hus- 
band, Thomas.” 

“ Well, my beautiful. I’ll make up for all my wrongs by 
ordering you about as if I were the Marquis of Saluzzo, 
and you the patient Grisel.” 

“ I wish you would. You don’t order me about half 
enough.” 

“ I’ll try to do better. You shall see.” 

Nestley was a lovely place, and the house was old enough 
to be quite respectable — one of those houses with a history 
and a growth, which are getting rarer every day as the ugly 
temples of mammon usurp their places. It was dusky, cool, 
and somber — a little shabby, indeed, which fell in harmo- 
niously with its peculiar charm, and indeed added to it. A 
lawn, not immaculate of the sweet fault of daisies, sank 
slowly to a babbling little tributary of the Lythe, and beyond 
were fern-covered slopes, and heather, and furze, and pine- 
woods. The rector was a sensible Englishman, who ob- 
jected to have things done after the taste of his gardener 
instead of his own. He loved grass like a village poet, and 
would have no flower-beds cut in his lawn. Neither would 
he have any flowers planted in the summer to be taken up 
again before the winter. He would have no cockney gar- 
dening about his place, he said. Perhaps that was partly 


64 


PAUL FABER. 


why he never employed any but his old cottagers about the 
grounds ; and the result was that for half the show he had 
twice the loveliness. His ambition was to have every 
possible English garden flower. 

As soon as his visitors arrived, he and his curate went 
away together, and Mrs. Wingfold was shown into the draw- 
ing-room, where was Mrs. Bevis with her knitting. A 
greater contrast than that of the two ladies then seated 
together in the long, low, dusky room, it were not easy to 
imagine. I am greatly puzzled to think what conscious 
good in life Mrs. Bevis enjoyed — just as I am puzzled to 
understand the eagerness with which horses, not hungry, 
and evidently in full enjoyment of the sun and air and easy 
exercise, will yet hurry to their stable the moment their 
heads are turned in the direction of them. Is it that they 
have no hope in the unknown, and then alone, in all the 
vicissitudes of their day, know their destination ? Would 
but some good kind widow, of the same type with Mrs. 
Bevis, without children, tell me wherefore she is unwilling 
to die ! She has no special friend to whom she unbosoms 
herself — indeed, so far as any one knows, she has never had 
any thing of which to unbosom herself. She has no pet — 
dog or cat or monkey or macaw, and has never been seen 
to hug a child. She never reads poetry — I doubt if she 
knows more than the first line of How doth. She reads 
neither novels nor history, and looks at the newspaper as if 
the type were fly-spots. Yet there she sits smiling ! Why ! 
oh ! why ? Probably she does not know. Never did ques- 
tion, not to say doubt, cause those soft, square-ended fingers 
to move one atom less measuredly in the construction of 
Mrs. Bevis’s muffetee, the sole knittable thing her nature 
seemed capable of. Never was sock seen on her needles ; 
the turning of the heel was too much for her. That she 
had her virtues, however, was plain from the fact that her 
servants staid with her years and years ; and I can, beside, 
from observation set down a few of them. She never asked 
her husband what he would have for dinner. When he was 
ready to go out with her, she was always ready too. She 
never gave one true reason, and kept back a truer — possi- 
bly there was not room for two thoughts at once in her 
brain. She never screwed down a dependent ; never kept 
small tradespeople waiting for their money ; never refused 
a reasonable request. In fact, she was a stuffed bag of vir- 
tues ; the bag was of no great size, but neither were the virtues 


PAUL FABER. 


65 

insignificant. There are dozens of sorts of people I should 
feel a far stronger objection to living with ; but what puz- 
zles me is how she contrives to live with herself, never ques- 
tioning the comfort of the arrangement, or desiring that it 
should one day come to an end. Surely she must be deep, 
and know some secret ! 

For the other lady, Helen Lingard that was, she had since 
her marriage altered considerably in the right direction. 
She used to be a little dry, a little stiff, and a little stately. 
To the last I should be far from objecting, were it not that 
her stateliness was of the mechanical sort, belonging to the 
spine, and not to a soul uplift. Now it had left her spine 
and settled in a soul that scorned the low and loved the 
lowly. Her step was lighter, her voice more flexible, her 
laugh much merrier and more frequent, for now her heart 
was gay. Her husband praised God when he heard her 
laugh ; the laugh suggested the praise, for itself rang like 
praises. She would pull up her ponies in the middle of the 
street, and at word or sign, the carriage would be full of 
children. Whoever could might scramble in till it was full. 
At the least rudeness, the offender would be ordered to the 
pavement, and would always obey, generally weeping. She 
would drive two or three times up and down the street with 
her load, then turn it out, and take another, and another, 
until as many as she judged fit had had a taste of the pleas- 
ure. This she had learned from seeing a costermonger fill 
his cart with children, and push behind, while the donkey in 
front pulled them along the street, to the praise and glory 
of God. 

She was overbearing in one thing, and that was submis- 
sion. Once, when I was in her husband’s study, she made 
a remark on something he had said or written, I forget what, 
for which her conscience of love immediately smote her. 
She threw herself on the floor, crept under the writing table 
at which he sat, and clasped his knees. 

“ I beg your pardon, husband,” she said sorrowfully. 

“ Flelen,” he cried, laughing rather oddly, “ you will 
make a consummate idiot of me before you have done.” 

“ Forgive me,” she pleaded. 

“ I can’t forgive you. How can I forgive where there is 
positively nothing to be forgiven ? ” 

“ I don’t care what you say ; I know better; you mustior- 
give me.” 

“ Nonsense ! ” 


66 


PAUL FABER. 


Forgive me.” 

“ Do get up. Don’t be silly.” 

“ Forgive me. I will lie here till you do.” 

But your remark was perfectly true.” 

“ It makes no difference. I ought not to have said it like 
that. Forgive me, or I will cry.” 

I will tell no more of it. Perhaps it is silly of me to tell 
any, but it moved me strangely. 

1 have said enough to show there was a contrast between 
the two ladies. As to what passed in the way of talk, that, 
from pure incapacity, I dare not attempt to report. I did 
hear them talk once, and they laughed too, but not one 
salient point could I lay hold of by which afterward to 
recall their conversation. Do I dislike Mrs. Bevis ? Not in 
the smallest degree. I could read a book I loved in her 
presence. That would be impossible to me in the presence 
of Mrs. Ramshorn. 

Mrs. Wingfold had developed a great faculty for liking 
people. It was quite a fresh shoot of her nature, for she 
had before been rather of a repellent disposition. I wish 
there were more, and amongst them some of the best of 
people, similarly changed. Surely the latter would soon be, 
if once they had a glimpse of how much the coming of the 
kingdom is retarded by defect of courtesy. The people I 
mean are slow to like, and until they come to like, they seem 
to dislike. I have known such whose manner was fit to 
imply entire disapprobation of the very existence of those 
upon whom they looked for the first time. They might then 
have been saying to themselves, “ / would never have created 
such people ! ” Had I not known them, I could not have 
imagined them lovers of God or man, though they were of 
both. True courtesy, that is, courtesy born of a true heart, 
is a most lovely, and absolutely indispensable grace — one 
that nobody but a Christian can thoroughly develop. God 
grant us a “ coming-on disposition,” as Shakespeare calls it. 
Who shall tell whose angel stands nearer to the face of the 
Father ? Should my brother stand lower in the social scale 
than I, shall I not be the more tender, and respectful, and 
self-refusing toward him, that God has placed him there 
who may all the time be greater than I ? A year before, 
Helen could hardly endure doughy Mrs. Bevis, but now she 
had found something to like in her, and there was confi- 
dence and faith between them. So there they sat, the elder 
lady meandering on, and Helen, who had taken care to 


PAUL FABER. 


67 


bring some work with her, every now and then casting a 
bright glance in her face, or saying two or three words with 
a smile, or asking some simple question. Mrs. Bevis talked 
chiefly of the supposed affairs and undoubted illness of Miss 
Meredith, concerning both of which rather strange reports 
had reached her. 

Meantime the gentlemen were walking through the park 
in earnest conversation. They crossed the little brook and 
climbed to the heath on the other side. There the rector 
stood, and turning to his companion, said : 

“ It’s rather late in the day for a fellow to wake up, ain’t 
it. Wingfold ? You see I was brought up to hate fanaticism, 
and that may have blinded me to something you have seen 
and got a hold of. I wish I could just see what it is, but I 
never was much of a theologian. Indeed I suspect I am 
rather stupid in some things. But I would fain try to look 
my duty in the face. It’s not for me to start up and teach 
the people, because I ought to have been doing it all this 
time : I’ve got nothing to teach them. God only knows 
whether I haven’t been breaking every one of the com- 
mandments I used to read to them every Sunday.” 

“ But God does know, sir,” said the curate, with even 
more than his usual respect in his tone, “ and that is well, 
for otherwise we might go on breaking them forever.” 

The rector gave him a sudden look, full in the face, but 
said nothing, seemed to fall a thinking, and for some time 
was silent. 

“ There’s one thing clear,” he resumed : “ I’ve been tak- 
ing pay, and doing no work. I used to think I was at least 
doing no harm — that I was merely using one of the privi- 
leges of my position : I not only paid a curate, but all the 
repair the church ever got was from me. Now, however, 
for the first time, I reflect that the money was not given me 
for that. Doubtless it has been all the better for my con- 
gregation, but that is only an instance of the good God 
brings out of evil, and the evil is mine still. Then, again, 
there’s all this property my wife brought me : what have I 
done with that ? The kingdom of heaven has not come a 
hair’s-breadth nearer for my being a parson of the Church of 
England ; neither are the people of England a shade the 
better that I am one of her land-owners. It is surely time 
I did something. Wingfold, my boy I ” 

“ I think it is, sir,” answered the curate. 

“ Then, in God’s name, what am I to do ?” returned the 
rector, almost testily. 


68 


PAUL FABER. 


“ Nobody can answer that question but yourself, sir,’* 
replied Wingfold. 

“ It’s no use my trying to preach. I could not write a 
sermon if I took a month to it. If it were a paper on the 
management of a stable, now, I think I could write that — 
respectably. I know what I am about there. I could even 
write one on some of the diseases of horses and bullocks — 
but that’s not what the church pays me for. There’s one 
thing though — it comes over me strong that I should like 
to read prayers in the old place again. I want to pray, and 
I don’t know how ; and it seems as if I could shove in 
some of my own if I had them going through my head once 
again. I tell you what : we won’t make any fuss about it — 
what’s in a name ? — but from this day you shall be incum- 
bent, and I will be curate. You shall preach — or what you 
please, and I shall read the prayers or not, just as you please. 
Try what you can make of me. Wingfold. Don’t ask me 
to do what I can't, but help me to do what I can. Look 
here — here’s what I’ve been thinking — it came to me last 
night as I was walking about here after coming from Glas- 
ton : — here, in this corner of the parish, we are a long way 
from church. In the village there, there is no place of 
worship except a little Methodist one. There isn’t one of 
their — local preachers, I believe they call them — that don’t 
preach a deal better than I could if I tried ever so much. 
It’s vulgar enough sometimes, they tell me, but then they 
preach, and mean it. Now I might mean it, but I shouldn’t 
preach ; — for what is it to people at work all the week to have 
a man read a sermon to them? You might as well drive 
a nail by pushing it in with the palm of your hand. Those 
men use the hammer. Ill-bred, conceited fellows, some of 
them, I happen to know, but they know their business. Now 
why shouldn’t I build a little place here on my own ground,- and 
get the bishop to consecrate it ? I would read prayers for you 
in the abbey church in the morning, and then you would not 
be too tired to come and preach here in the evening. I 
would read the prayers here too, if you liked.” 

“ I think your scheme delightful,” answered the curate, 
after a moment’s pause. “ I would only venture to suggest 
one improvement — that you should not have your chapel 
consecrated. You will find it ever so much more useful. 
It will then be dedicated to the God of the whole earth, 
instead of the God of the Church of England.” 

“ Why ! ain’t they the same ? ” cried the rector, half 
aghast, as he stopped and faced round on the curate. 


PAUL FABER. 


69 


“Yes,” answered Wingfold ; “and all will be well when 
the Church of England really recognizes the fact. Mean- 
time its idea of God is such as will not at all fit the God of 
the whole earth. And that is why she is in bondage. 
Except she burst the bonds of her own selfishness, she will 
burst her heart and go to pieces, as her enemies would have 
her. Every piece will be alive, though, I trust, more or 
less.” 

“ I don’t understand you,” said the rector. “ What has 
all that to do with the consecration of my chapel ? ” 

“ If you don’t consecrate it,” answered Wingfold, “ it will 
remain a portion of the universe, a thoroughfare for all 
divine influences, open as the heavens to every wind that 
blows. Consecration — ” 

Here the curate checked himself. He was going to say 
— “ is another word for congestion,” — but he bethought 
himself what a wicked thing it would be, for the satisfaction 
of speaking his mind, to disturb that of his rector, brooding 
over a good work. 

“But,” he concluded therefore, “there will be time 
enough to think about that. The scheme is a delightful 
one. Apart from it, however, altogether — if you would but 
read prayers in your own church, it would wonderfully 
strengthen rhy hands. Only I am afraid I should shock 
you sometimes.” 

“ I will take my chance of that. If you do, I will tell 
you of it. And if I do what you don’t like, you must tell 
me of it. I trust neither of us will find the other incapable 
of understanding his neighbor’s position.” 

They walked to the spot which the rector had already in 
his mind as the most suitable for the projected chapel. It 
was a bit of gently rising ground, near one of the gates, 
whence they could see the whole of the little village of 
Owlkirk. One of the nearest cottages was that of Mrs. 
Puckridge. They saw the doctor ride in at the other end 
of the street, stop there, fasten his horse to the paling, and 
go in. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


THE GARDEN AT OWLKIRK. 

No sooner harJ Faber left the cottage that same morning, 
than the foolish Mrs. Puckridge proceeded to pour out to 
the patient, still agitated both with her dream and her 
waking vision, all the terrible danger she had been in, and 
the marvelous way in which the doctor had brought her 
back from the threshold of death. Every drop of the little 
blood in her body seemed to rush to her face, then back to 
her heart, leaving behind it a look of terror. She covered 
her face with the sheet, and lay so long without moving 
that her nurse was alarmed. When she drew the sheet 
back, she found her in a faint, and it was with great diffi- 
culty she brought her out of it. But not one word could 
she get from her. She did not seem even to hear what she 
said. Presently she grew restless, and soon her flushed 
cheek and bright eye indicated an increase of fever. When 
Faber saw her, he was much disappointed, perceived at 
once that something had excited her, and strongly suspected 
that, for all her promises, Mrs. Puckridge had betrayed the 
means by which he recovered her. 

He said to himself that he had had no choice, but then 
neither had the lady, and the thing might be hateful to her. 
She might be in love, and then how she must abcminate 
the business, and detest him ! It was horrible to think of 
her knowing it. But for knowing it, she would never be a 
whit the worse, for he never had a day’s illness in his lift, 
and knew of no taint in his family. 

When she saw him approach her bedside, a look reminding 
him of the ripple of a sudden cold gust passing with the 
shadow of a cloud over still water swept across her face. 
She closed her eyes, and turned a little from him. What 
color she had, came and went painfully. Cursing in his 
heart the faithlessness of Mrs. Puckridge, he assumed his 
coldest, hardest professional manner, felt her pulse with the 
gentlest, yet most peremptory inquiry, gave her attendant 
some authoritative directions, and left her, saying he would 
call again in the afternoon. 


PAUL FABER. 


71 


During seven days he visited her twice a day. He had 
good cause to be anxious, and her recovery was very slow. 
Once and again appeared threatenings of the primary com- 
plaint, while from the tardiness with which her veins refilled, 
he feared for her lungs. During all these visits, hardly a 
word beyond the most necessary passed between them. After 
that time they were reduced to one a day. Ever as the 
lady grew stronger, she seemed to become colder, and her 
manner grew more distant. After a fortnight, he again 
reduced them to one in two days — very unwillingly, for by 
that time she had come to occupy nearly as much of his 
thoughts as all the rest of his patients together. She made 
him feel that his visits were less than welcome to her, 
except for the help they brought her, allowed him no 
insight into her character and ways of thinking, behaved to 
him indeed with such restraint, that he could recall no expres- 
sion of her face the memory of which drew him to dwell 
upon it ; yet her face and form possessed him with their 
mere perfection. He had to set himself sometimes to get rid 
of what seemed all but her very presence, for it threatened to 
unfit him for the right discharge of his duties. He was 
haunted with the form to which he had given a renewal of 
life, as a murderer is haunted with the form of the man he 
has killed. In those marvelous intervals betwixt sleep and 
waking, when the soul is like a camera obscura^ into which 
throng shapes unbidden, hers had displaced all others, and 
came constantly — now flashing with feverous radiance, now 
pale and bloodless as death itself. But ever and always 
her countenance wore a look of aversion. She seemed in 
these visions, to regard him as a vile necromancer, who first 
cast her into the sepulcher, and then brought her back by 
some hellish art. She had fascinated him. But he would 
not allow that he was in love with her. A man may be fas- 
cinated and hate. A man is not necessarily in love with 
the woman whose form haunts him. So said Faber to him- 
self ; and I can not yet tell whether he was in love with her 
or not. I do not know where the individuality of love com- 
mences — when love begins to be love. He must have been 
a good way toward that point, however, to have thus 
betaken himself to denial. He was the more interested to 
prove himself free, that he feared, almost believed, there 
was a lover concerned, and that was the reason she hated 
him so severely for what he had done. 

He had long come to the conclusion that circumstances had 


72 


PAUL FABER. 


Straitened themselves around her. Experience had given 
him a keen eye, and he had noted several things about her 
dress. For one thing, while he had observed that her 
under-clothing was peculiarly dainty, he had once or twice 
caught a glimpse of such an incongruity as he was com- 
pelled to set down to poverty. Besides, what reason in 
which poverty bore no part, could a lady have for being 
alone in a poor country lodging, without even a maid ? 
Indeed, might it not be the consciousness of the peculiarity 
of her position, and no dislike to him, that made her treat 
him with such impenetrable politeness ? Might she not 
well dread being misunderstood ! 

She would be wanting to pay him for his attendance — 
and what was he to do ? He must let her pay something, 
or she would consider herself still more grievously wronged 
by him, but how was he to take the money from her hand ? 
It was very hard that ephemeral creatures of the earth, born 
but to die, to gleam out upon the black curtain and vanish 
again, might not, for the brief time the poor yet glorious 
bubble swelled and throbbed, offer and accept from each 
other even a few sunbeams in which to dance ! Would not 
the inevitable rain beat them down at night, and “ mass 
them into the common clay ” ? How then could they hurt 
each other — why should they fear it — when they were all 
wandering home to the black, obliterative bosom of their 
grandmother Night ? He well knew a certain reply to such 
reflection, but so he talked with himself. 

He would take his leave as if she were a duchess. But 
he would not until she made him feel another visit would be 
an intrusion. 

One day Mrs. Puckridge met him at the door, looking 
mysterious. She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder 
to indicate that the lady was in the garden, but at the same 
time nudged him with her elbow, confident that the impart- 
ment she had to make would justify the liberty, and led the 
way into the little parlor. 

“ Please, sir, and tell me,” she said, turning and closing 
the door, “ what I be to do. She says she’s got no money 
to pay neither me nor the doctor, so she give me this, and 
wants me to sell it. I daren’t show it ! They’d say I stole 
it ! She declares that if I mention to a living soul where I 
got it, she’ll never speak to me again. In course she didn’t 
mean you, sir, seein’ as doctors an’ clergymen ain't nobody 
— leastways nobody to speak on — and I’m sure I beg your 


PAUL FABER. 


73 

pardon, sir, but my meanin’ is as they ain’t them as ain’t to 
be told things. I declare I’m most terrified to set eyes 
on the thing ! ” 

She handed the doctor a little morocco case. He opened 
it, and saw a ring, which was plainly of value. It was old- 
fashioned — a round mass of small diamonds with a good- 
sized central one. 

“ You are quite right,” he said. “ The ring is far too val- 
uable for you to dispose of. Bring it to my house at four 
o’clock, and I will get rid of it for you.” 

Mrs. Puckridge was greatly relieved, and ended the 
interview by leading the way to the back-door. When she 
opened it, he saw his patient sitting in the little arbor. She 
rose, and came to meet him. 

“You see lam quite well now,” she said, holding out 
her hand. 

Her tone was guarded, but surely the ice was melting a 
little ! Was she taking courage at the near approach of 
her deliverance ? 

She stooped to pick a double daisy from the border. 
Prompt as he generally was, he could say nothing : he 
knew what was coming next. She spoke while still she 
stooped. 

“ When you come again,” she said, “ will you kindly let 
me know how much I am in your debt ? ” 

As she ended she rose and stood before him, but she 
looked no higher than his shirt-studs. She was ashamed to 
speak of her indebtedness as an amount that could be 
reckoned. The whiteness of her cheek grew warm, which 
was all her complexion ever revealed of a blush. It showed 
plainer in the deepened darkness of her eyes, and the trem- 
ulous increase of light in them. 

“ I will,” he replied, without the smallest response of 
confusion, for he had recovered himself. “ You will be 
careful ! ” he added. “ Indeed you must, or you will never 
be strong.” 

She answered only with a little sigh, as if weakness was 
such a weariness ! and looked away across the gg-rden- 
hedge out into the infinite — into more of it at least I thixik, 
than Faber recognized. 

“ And of all things,” he went on, “wear shoes — every time 
you have to step off a carpet — not mere foot-gloves like 
those.” 

“ Is this a healthy place, Doctor Faber ? ” she asked, 


74 


PAUL FACER. 


looking haughtier, he thought, but plainly with a little 
trouble in her eyes. 

“ Decidedly,” he answered. “ And when you are able to 
walk on the heath you will find the air invigorating. Only 
please mind what I say about your shoes. — May I ask if you 
intend remaining here any time ? ” 

“ I have already remained so much longer than I in- 
tended, that I am afraid to say. My plans are now uncer- 
tain.” 

“ Excuse me — I know I presume — but in our profession 
we must venture a little now and then — could you not have 
some friend with you until you are perfectly strong again ? 
After what you have come through, it may be years before 
you are quite what you were. I don’t want to frighten you 
— only to make you careful.” 

“ There is no one,” she answered in a low voice, which 
trembled a little. 

“No one — ? ” repeated Faber, as if waiting for the end 
of the sentence. But his heart gave a great bound. 

“ No one to come to me. I am alone in the world. My 
mother died when I was a child and my father two years 
ago. He was an officer. I was his only child, and used to 
go about with him. I have no friends.” 

Her voice faltered more and more. When it ceased she 
seemed choking a cry. 

“ Since then,” she resumed, “ I have been a governess. 
My last situation was in Yorkshire, in a cold part of the 
county, and my health began to fail me. I heard that 
Glaston was a warm place, and one where I should be likely 
to get employment. But I was taken ill on my way there, 
and forced to stop. A lady in the train told me this was 
such a sweet, quiet little place, and so when we got to the 
station I came on here.” 

Again Faber could not speak. The thought of a lady 
like her traveling about alone looking for work was fright- 
ful ! “ And they talk of a God in the world ! ” he said to 

himself — and felt as if he never could forgive Him. 

“ I have papers to show,” she added quietly, as if be- 
thinking herself that he might be taking her for an im- 
postor. 

All the time she had never looked him in the face. She 
had fixed her gaze on the far horizon, but a smile, half piti- 
ful, half proud, flickered about the wonderful curves of her 
upper lip. 


PAUL FABER. 


75 


“ I am glad you have told me,” he said. I may be of 
service to you, if you will permit me. I know a great many 
families about here.” 

“ Oh, thank you ! ” she cried, and with an expression of 
dawning hope, which made her seem more beautiful than 
ever, she raised her eyes and looked him full in the face : it 
was the first time he had seen her eyes lighted up, except 
with^ fever. Then she turned from him, and, apparently 
lost in relief, walked toward the arbor a few steps distant. 
He followed her, a little behind, for the path was narrow, 
his eyes fixed on her exquisite cheek. It was but a moment, 
yet the very silence seemed to become conscious. All at 
once she grew paler, shuddered, put her hand to her head, 
and entering the arbor, sat down. Faber was alarmed. 
Her hand was quite cold. She would have drawn it away, 
but he insisted on feeling her pulse. 

“ You must come in at once,” he said. 

She rose, visibly trembling. He supported her into the 
house, made her lie down, got a hot bottle for her feet, and 
covered her with shawls and blankets. 

“ You are quite unfit for any exertion yet,” he said, and 
seated himself near her. “ You must consent to be an in- 
valid for a while. Do not be anxious. There is no fear of 
your finding what you want by the time you are able for it. 
I pledge myself. Keep your mind perfectly easy.” 

She answered him with a look that dazzled him. Her very 
eyelids seemed radiant with thankfulness. The beauty that 
had fixed his regard was now but a mask through which her 
soul was breaking, assimilating it. His eyes sank before 
the look, and he felt himself catching his breath like a 
drowning man. When he raised them again he saw tears 
streaming down her face. He rose, and saying he would 
call again in the evening, left the room. 

During the rest of his round he did not find it easy to 
give due attention to his other cases. His custom was 
to brood upon them as he rode ; but now that look and the 
tears that followed seemed to bewilder him, taking from him 
all command of his thought. 

Ere long the shadow that ever haunts the steps of the 
angel. Love, the shadow whose name is Beneficence, began 
to reassume its earlier tyranny. Oh, the bliss of knowing 
one’s self the source of well-being, the stay and protector, the 
comfort and life, to such a woman ! of wrapping her round 
in days of peace, instead of anxiety and pain and labor ! 


PAUL FABER. 


76 

But ever the thought of her looking up to him as the source 
of her freedom, was present through it all. What a glory 
to be the object of such looks as he had never in his dearest 
dreams imagined ! It made his head swim, even in the very 
moment while his great Ruber, astonished at what his master 
required of him that day, rose to some high thorny hedge, 
or stiff rail. He was perfectly honest ; the consequence he 
sought was only in his own eyes — and in hers ; there was noth- 
ing of vulgar patronage in the feeling ; not an atom of low 
purpose for self in it. The whole mental condition was 
nothing worse than the blossom of the dream of his child- 
hood — the dream of being the benefactor of his race, of 
being loved and worshiped for his kindness. But the 
poison of the dream had grown more active in its blossom. 
Since then the credit of goodness with himself had gathered 
sway over his spirit ; and stoical pride in goodness is a 
far worse and lower thing than delight in the thanks of our 
fellows. He was a mere slave to his own ideal, and that 
ideal was not brother to the angel that beholds the face of 
the Father. Now he had taken a backward step in time, but 
a forward step in his real history, for again another than 
himself had a part in his dream. It would be long yet, 
however, ere he learned so to love goodness as to forget its 
beauty. To him who is good, goodness has ceased to be 
either object or abstraction ; it is m him — a thirst to give ; 
a solemn, quiet passion to bless ; a delight in beholding well- 
being. Ah, how we dream and prate of love, until the holy 
fire of the true divine love, the love that God kindles in a 
man toward his fellows, burns the shadow of it out ! 

In the afternoon Mrs. Puckridge appeared with the ring. 
He took it, told her to wait, and went out. In a few minutes 
he returned, and, to the woman’s astonishment, gave her 
fifty pounds in notes. He did not tell her he had been to 
nobody but his own banker. The ring he laid carefully 
aside, with no definite resolve concerning it, but the great 
hope of somehow managing that it should return to her one 
day. The thought shot across his heaven — what a lovely 
wedding present it would make ! and the meteor drew a 
long train of shining fancies after it. 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE PARLOR AT OWLKIRK. 

When he called, as he had said, in the evening, she 
looked much better, and there was even a touch of playful- 
ness in her manner. He could not but hope some crisis had 
been passed. The money she had received for the ring had 
probably something to do with it. Perhaps she had not 
known how valuable the ring was. Thereupon in his 
conscientiousness he began to doubt whether he had given 
her its worth. In reality he had exceeded it by a few 
pounds, as he discovered upon inquiry afterward in 
London. Anyhow it did not much matter, he said to 
himself : he was sure to find some way of restoring it to 
her. 

Suddenly she looked up, and said hurriedly : 

I can never repay you. Dr. Faber. No one can do the 
impossible.” 

“ You can repay me,” returned Faber. 

“ How ? ” she said, looking startled. 

“ By never again thinking of obligation to me.” 

“ You must not ask that of me,” she rejoined. It would 
not be right.” 

The tinge of a rose not absolutely white floated over her 
face and forehead as she spoke. 

“ Then I shall be content,” he replied, “ if you will say 
nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I 
promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe’s.” 

She smiled, looked up brightly, and said, 

“ You promise ? ” 

“ I do.” 

“ If you don’t keep your promise, I shall have to take 
severe measures. Don’t fancy me without money. I could 
pay you now — at least I think so.” 

It was a great good sign of her that she could talk about 
money plainly as she did. It wants a thoroughbred soul to 
talk Just right about money. Most people treat money like 
a bosom-sin : they follow it earnestly, but do not talk about 
it at all in society. 


78 


PAUL FABER. 


“ I only pay six shillings a week for my lodgings ! ” she 
added, with a merry laugh. 

What had become of her constraint and stateliness? 
Courtesy itself seemed gone, and simple trust in its place ! 
Was she years younger than he had thought her ? She was 
hemming something, which demanded her eyes, but every 
now and then she cast up a glance, and they were black 
suns unclouding over a white sea. Every look made a 
vintage in the doctor’s heart. There could be no man in the 
case ! Only again, would fifty pounds, with the loss of a 
family ring, serve to account for such a change ? Might she 
not have heard from somebody since he saw her yesterday ? 
In her presence he dared not follow the thought. 

Some books were lying on the table which could not 
well be Mrs. Puckridge’s. He took up one : it was In 
Memoriam. 

Do you like Tennyson ? ” she asked. 

That is a hard question to answer straight off,” he 
replied. — He had once liked Tennyson, else he would not 
have answered so. — “ Had you asked me if I liked /« 
Memoriam,'' he went on, I could more easily have an- 
swered you.” 

Then, don’t you like In Memoriaml" 

“ No ; it is weak and exaggerated.” 

Ah ! you don’t understand it. I didn’t until after my 
father died. Then I began to know what it meant, and now 
think it the most beautiful poem I ever read.” 

“ You are fond of poetry, then ?” 

“ I don’t read much ; but I think there is more in some 
poetry than in all the prose in the world.” 

“ That is a good deal to say.” 

A good deal too much, when I think that I haven’t 
read, I suppose, twenty books in my life — that is, books 
worth calling books : I don’t mean novels and things of 
that kind. Yet I can not believe twenty years of good 
reading would make me change my mind about InMetnoria77i. 
— You don’t like poetry ? ” 

“ I can’t say I do — much. I like Pope and Crabbe — and 
— let rne see — well, I used to like Thomson. I like the men 
that give you things just as they are. I do not like the 
poets that mix themselves up with what they see, and then 
rave about Nature. I confess myself a lover of the truth 
beyond all things.” 

‘‘ But are you sure,” she returned, looking him gently but 


PAUL FABER. 


79 


straight in the eyes, “ that, in your anxiety not to make 
more of things than they are, you do not make less of them 
than they are ? ” 

“ There is no fear of that,” returned Faber sadly, with an 
unconscious shake of the head. “ So long as there is youth 
and imagination on that side to paint them, — ” 

“ Excuse me : are you not begging the question ? Do 
they paint, or do they see what they say ? Some profess to 
believe that the child sees more truly than the grown man 
— that the latter is the one who paints, — paints out, that is, 
with a coarse brush.” 

“ You mean Wordsworth.” 

“ Not him only.” 

“ True ; no end of poets besides. They all say it now-a- 
days.” 

“ But surely, Mr. Faber, if there be a God, — ” 

“ Ah ! ” interrupted the doctor, “ there jycpu beg the ques- 
tion. Suppose there should be no God, what then ? ” 

“ Then, I grant you, there could be no poetry. Somebody 
says poetry is the speech of hope ; and certainly if there 
were no God, there could be no hope.” 

Faber was struck with what she said, not from any feeling 
that there was truth in it, but from its indication of a not 
illogical mind. He was on the point of .replying that 
certain kinds of poetry, and In Memoriam in particular, 
seemed to him more like the speech of a despair that had 
not the courage to confess itself and die ; but he saw she 
had not a suspicion he spoke as he did for any thing but 
argument, and feared to fray his bird by scattering his 
crumbs too roughly. He honestly believed deliverance 
from the superstition into which he granted a fine nature 
was readier to fall than a common one, the greatest gift one 
human being could offer to another ; but at the same time 
he could not bear to think of her recoil from such utterance 
of his unfaith as he had now almost got into the habit of 
making. He bethought himself, too, that he had already mis- 
represented himself, in giving her the impression that he was 
incapable of enjoying poetry of the more imaginative sort. 
He had indeed in his youth been passionately fond of such 
verse. Then came a time in which he turned from it with 
a sick dismay. Feelings and memories of agony, which a 
word, a line, would rouse in him afresh, had brought him to 
avoid it with an aversion seemingly deep-rooted as an instinct, 
and mounting even to loathing ; and when at length he cast 


8o 


PAUL FABER. 


from him the semi-beliefs of his education, he persuaded hirn- 
self that he disliked it for its falsehood. He read his 
philosophy by the troubled light of wrong and suffering, and 
that is not the light of the morning, but of a burning 
house. Of all poems, naturally enough, he then disliked 
In Memoriam the most ; and now it made him almost angry 
that Juliet Meredith should like so much what he so 
much disliked. Not that he would have a lady indifferent 
to poetry. That would argue a lack of poetry in herself, 
and such a lady would be like a scentless rose. You could 
not expect, who indeed could wish a lady to be scientific in 
her ways of regarding things ? Was she not the live con- 
centration, the perfect outcome, of the vast poetic show of 
Nature? In shape, in motion of body and brain, in tone 
and look, in color and hair, in faithfulness to old dolls and 
carelessness of hearts, was she not the sublimation, the es- 
sence of sunsets, and fading roses, and butterflies, andsnows, 
and running waters, and changing clouds, and cold, shadowy 
moonlight ? He argued thus more now in sorrow than in 
anger ; for what was the woman but a bubble on the sand 
of the infinite soulless sea — a bubble of a hundred lovely 
hues, that must shine because’ it could not help it, and for 
the same reason break ? She was not to blame. Let her 
shine and glow, and sparkle, and vanish. For him, he cared 
for nothing but science — nothing that did not promise one 
day to yield up its kernel to the seeker. To him science 
stood for truth, and for truth in the inward parts stood 
obedience to the laws of Nature. If he was one of a poor 
race, he would rise above his fellows by being good to them 
in their misery ; while for himself he would confess to no 
misery. Let the laws of Nature work — eyeless and heart- 
less as the whirlwind ; he would live his life, be himself, be 
Nature, and depart without a murmur. No scratch on the 
face of time, insignificant even as the pressure of a fern- 
leaf upon coal, should tell that he had ever thought his fate 
hard. He would do his endeavor and die and return to noth- 
ing — not then more dumb of complaint than now. Such 
had been for years his stern philosophy, and why should it 
now trouble him that a woman thought differently ? Did 
the sound of faith from such lips, the look of hope in such 
eyes, stir any thing out of sight in his heart ? Was it for a 
moment as if the corner of a veil were lifted, the lower 
edge of a mist, and he saw something fair beyond ? Came 
there a little glow and flutter out of the old time ? “ Ail 


PAUL FABER. 


8l 


forget,” he said to himself. I too have forgotten. Why 
should not Nature forget? Why should I befooled any 
more ? Is it not enough ? ” 

Yet as he sat gazing, in the broad light of day, through the 
cottage window, across whose panes waved the little red 
bells of the common fuchsia, something that had nothing 
to do with science and yet was, seemed to linger and hover 
over the little garden — something from the very depths of 
loveliest folly. Was it the refrain of an old song ? or the 
smell of withered rose leaves ? or was there indeed a kind 
of light such as never was on sea or shore ? 

Whatever it was, it was out of the midst of it the voice 
of the lady seemed to come — a clear musical voice in com- 
mon speech, but now veiled and trembling, as if it brooded 
hearkening over the words it uttered : 

I wrong the grave with fears untrue : 

Shall love be blamed for want of faith ? 

There must be wisdom with great Death : 

The dead shall look me through and through. 

“ Be near us when we climb or fall : 

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 

With larger other eyes than ours, 

To make allowance for us all.” 

She ceased, and the silence was like that which follows 
sweet music. 

“ Ah ! you think of your father ! ” he hazarded, and hoped 
indeed it was her father of whom she was thinking. 

She made no answer. He turned toward her in anxiety. 
She was struggling with emotion. The next instant the 
tears gushed into her eyes, while a smile seemed to struggle 
from her lips, and spread a little way over her face. It was 
inexpressibly touching. 

“ He was my friend,” she said. “ I shall never have such 
love again.” 

“ All is not lost when much is lost,” said the doctor, with 
sad comfort. “There are spring days in winter.” 

And you don’t like poetry ! ” she said, a sweet playfu/ 
scorn shining through her tears. 

“ I spoke but a sober truth,” he returned ; “ — so sober 
that it seems but the sadder for its truth. The struggle of 
life is to make the best of things that might be worse.” 

She looked at him pitifully. For a moment her lips 


82 


PAUL FABER. 


parted, then a strange look as of sudden bodily pain 
crossed her face, her lips closed, and her mouth looked as 
if it were locked. She shut the book which lay upon her 
knee, and resumed her needlework. A shadow settled upon 
her face. 

“ What a pity such a woman should be wasted in believ- 
ing lies ! ” thought the doctor. “ How much better it would 
be if she would look things in the face, and resolve to live 
as she can, doing her best and enduring her worst, and wait- 
ing for the end ! And yet, seeing color is not the thing 
itself, and only in the brain whose eye looks upon it, why 
should I think it better ? why should she not shine in the 
color of her fancy ? why should she grow gray because the 
color is only in herself ? We are but bubbles flying from 
the round of Nature’s mill-wheel. Our joys and griefs are 
the colors that play upon the bubbles. Their throbs and 
ripples and changes are our music and poetry, and their 
bursting is our endless repose. Let us waver and float and 
shine in the sun ; let us bear pitifully and be kind ; for the 
night cometh, and there an end.” 

But in the sad silence, he and the lady were perhaps 
drifting further and further apart ! 

“ I did not mean,” he said, plunging into what came first, 
“ that I could not enjoy verse of the kind you prefer — as 
verse. I took the matter by the more serious handle, 
because, evidently, you accepted the tone and the scope of 
it. I have a weakness for honesty.” 

“ There is something not right about you, though, Mr. 
Faber — if I could find it out,” said Miss Meredith. “ You 
can not mean you enjoy any thing you do not believe in ? ” 

“ Surely there are many things one can enjoy without 
believing in them ? ” 

“ On the contrary, it seems to me that enjoying a thing 
is only another word for believing in it. If I thought the 
sweetest air on the violin had no truth in it, I could not 
listen to it a moment longer.” 

“ Of course the air has all the truth it pretends to — the 
truth, that is, of the relations of sounds and of intervals — 
also, of course, the truth of its relation as a whole to that 
creative something in the human mind which gave birth to 
it.” 

“ That is not all it pretends. It pretends that the some- 
thing it gives birth to in the human mind is also a true 
thing.” 


PAUL FABER. 


83 

Is there not then another way also, in which the violin 
may be said to be true ? Its tone throughout is of suffer- 
ing : does it not mourn that neither what gives rise to it, 
nor what it gives rise to, is any thing but a lovely vapor — 
the phantom of an existence not to be lived, only to be 
dreamed ? Does it not mourn that a man, though necessa- 
rily in harmony with the laws under which he lives, yet can 
not be sufficiently conscious of that harmony to keep him 
from straining after his dream ? ” 

“ Ah ! ” said Miss Meredith, “ then there is strife in the 
kingdom, and it can not stand ! ” 

“ There is strife in the kingdom, and it can not stand,” 
said the doctor, with mingled assent and assertion. “ Hence 
it is forever falling.” 

But it is forever renewed,” she objected. 

“With what renewal?” rejoined Faber. “What return 
is there from the jaws of death ? The individual is 
gone. A new consciousness is not a renewal of conscious- 
ness.” 

She looked at him keenly. 

“ It is hard, is it not ? ” she said. 

“ I will not deny that in certain moods it looks so,” he 
answered. 

She did not perceive his drift, and was feeling after it. 

“ Surely,” she said, “ the thing that ought to be, is the 
thing that must be.” 

“ How can we tell that ? ” he returned. “ What do we 
see like it in nature ? Whatever lives and thrives — animal 
or vegetable — or human — it is all one — every thing that lives 
and thrives, is forever living and thriving on the loss, the 
defeat, the death of another. There is no unity save abso- 
lutely by means of destruction. Destruction is indeed the 
very center and framework of the sole existing unity. I will 
not, therefore, as some do, call Nature cruel : what right 
have I to complain ? Nature can not help it. She is no 
more to blame for bringing me forth, than I am to blame for 
being brought forth. Ought is merely the reflex of like. We 
call ourselves the highest in Nature — and probably we are, 
being the apparent result of the whole — whence, naturally, 
having risen, we seek to rise, we feel after something we 
fancy higher. For as to the system in which we live, we 
are so ignorant that we can but blunderingly feel our way in 
it ; and if we knew all its laws, we could neither order nor 
control, save by a poor subservience. We are the slaves of 


84 


PAUL FABER. 


our circumstance, therefore betake ourselves to dreams of 
what ought to be." 

Miss Meredith was silent for a time. 

“ I can not see how to answer you,” she said at length. 
“ But you do not disturb my hope of seeing my father again. 
We have a sure word of prophecy.” 

Faber suppressed the smile of courteous contempt that 
was ready to break forth, and she went on : 

“ It would ill become me to doubt to-day, as you will 
grant when I tell you a wonderful fact. This morning I 
had not money enough to buy myself the pair of strong 
shoes you told me I must wear. I had nothing left but a 
few trinkets of my mother’s — one of them a ring I thought 
worth about ten pounds. I gave it to my landlady to sell 
for me, hoping she would get five for it. She brought me 
fifty, and I am rich ! ” 

Her last words trembled with triumph. He had himself 
been building her up in her foolish faith ! But he took con- 
solation in thinking how easily with a word he could any 
moment destroy that buttress of her phantom house. It 
was he, the unbeliever, and no God in or out of her 
Bible, that had helped her ! It did not occur to him that 
she might after all see in him only a reed blown of a divine 
wind. 

“ I am glad to hear of your good fortune,” he answered. 
“ I can not say I see how it bears on the argument. You had 
in your possession more than you knew.” 

“ Does the length of its roots alter the kind of the 
plant ? ” she asked. Do we not know in all nature and 
history that God likes to see things grow ? That must be 
the best way. It may be the only right way. If that ring 
was given to my mother against the time when the last 
child of her race should find herself otherwise helpless, 
would the fact that the provision was made so early turn 
the result into a mere chance meeting of necessity and 
subsidy ? Am I bound to call every good thing I receive a 
chance, except an angel come down visibly out of the blue 
sky and give it to me ? That would be to believe in a God 
who could not work His will by His own laws. Here I am, 
free and hopeful — all I needed. Every thing was dark and 
troubled yesterday ; the sun is up to-day.” 

“ There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the 
flood leads on to fortune,” said the doctor. 

“I begin to fear you mean what you say, Mr. Faber. 


PAUL FABER. 85 

I hoped it was only for argument’s sake,” returned Miss 
Meredith. 

She did not raise her eyes from her work this time. 
Faber saw that she was distressed if not hurt, and that her 
soul had closed its lips to him. He sprang to his feet, and 
stood bending before her. 

“ Miss Meredith,” he said, “ forgive me. I have offended 
you.” 

“ You have not offended me,” she said quietly. 

“ Hurt you then, which is worse.” 

“ How should I have got through,” she said, as if to her- 
self, and dropped her hands with her work on her knees, 
“ if I had not believed there was One caring for me all the 
time, even when I was most alone ! ” 

“ Do you never lose that faith ? ” asked the doctor. 

‘‘Yes; many and many a time. But it always comes 
back.” 

“ Comes and goes with your health.” 

“ No — is strongest sometimes when I am furthest from 
well.” 

“ When you are most feverish,” said the doctor. “ What 
a fool I am to go on contradicting her ! ” he added to 
himself. 

“ I think I know you better than you imagine, Mr. 
Faber,” said Miss Meredith, after just a moment’s pause. 
“ You are one of those men who like to represent them- 
selves worse than they are. I at least am bound to think 
better of you than you would have me. One who lives as 
you do for other people, can not be so far from the truth as 
your words.” 

Faber honestly repudiated the praise, for he felt it more 
than he deserved. He did try to do well by his neighbor, 
but was aware of no such devotion as it implied. Of late he 
had found his work bore him not a little— especially when 
riding away from Owlkirk. The praise, notwithstanding, 
sounded sweet from her lips, was sweeter still from her eyes, 
and from the warmer white of her cheek, which had begun 
to resume its soft roundness. 

“ Ah ! ” thought the doctor, as he rode slowly home, 
“ were it not for sickness, age, and death, this world of ours 
would be no bad place to live in. Surely mine is the most 
needful and the noblest of callings ! — to fight for youth, and 
health, and love, against age, and sickness, and decay ! to 
fight death to the last, even knowing he must have the best 


86 


PAUL FABER. 


of it in the end ! to set law against law, and do what poor 
thing may be done to reconcile the inexorable with the 
desirable ! Who knows — if law be blind, and I am a man 
that can see — for at the last, and only at the last do eyes 
come in the head of Nature — who knows but I may find out 
amongst the blind laws to which I am the eyes, that blind 
law which lies nearest the root of life ! — Ah, what a dreamer 
I should have been, had I lived in the time when great 
dreams were possible ! Beyond a doubt I should have sat 
brooding over the elixir of life, cooking and mixing, heating 
and cooling, watching for the flash in the goblet. We 
know so much now, that the range of hope is sadly limited ! 
A thousand dark ways of what seemed blissful possibility 
are now closed to us, because there the light now shines, 
and shows naught but despair. Yet why should the thing 
be absurd ? Can any one tell why this organism we call 
man should not go on working forever ? Why should it 
not, since its law is change and renewal, go on changing 
and renewing forever ? Why should it get tired ? Why 
should its law work more feeble, its relations hold less 
firmly, after a hundred years, than after ten ? Why should 
it grow and grow, then sink and sink ? No one knows a 
reason. Then why should it be absurd to seek what shall 
encounter the unknown cause, and encountering reveal it ? 
Might science be brought to the pitch that such a woman 
should live to all the ages, how many common lives 
might not well be spared to such an end ! How many 
noble ones would not willingly cease for such a consum- 
mation — dying that life should be lord, and death no longer 
king ! " 

Plainly Faber’s materialism sprang from no defect in the 
region of the imagination ; but I find myself unable to 
determine how much honesty, and how much pride and the 
desire to be satisfied with himself, had relatively to do with 
it. I would not be understood to imply that he had an 
unusual amount of pride ; and I am sure he was less easily 
satisfied with himself than most are. Most people will 
make excuses for themselves which they would neither 
make nor accept for their neighbor ; their own failures and 
follies trouble them little : Faber was of another sort. As 
ready as any other man to discover what could be said on 
his side, he was not so ready to adopt it. He required a 
good deal of himself. But then he unconsciously compared 
himself with his acquaintances, and made what he knew of 


PAUL FABER. 87 

them the gauge, if not the measure, of what he required of 
himself. 

It were unintelligible how a man should prefer being the 
slave of blind helpless Law to being the child of living Wis- 
dom, should believe in the absolute Nothing rather than in 
the perfect Will, were it not that he does not, can not see the 
Wisdom or the Will, except he draw nigh thereto. 

I shall be answered : 

“ We do not prefer. We mourn the change which yet 
we can not resist. We would gladly have the God of our 
former faith, were it possible any longer to believe in Him.” 

I answer again : 

“ Are you sure of what you say ? Do you in reality 
mourn over your lost faith ? For my part, I would rather 
disbelieve with you, than have what you have lost. For I 
would rather have no God than the God whom you suppose 
me to believe in, and whom therefore I take to be the God 
in whom you imagine you believed in the days of your 
ignorance. That those were days of ignorance, I do not 
doubt ; but are these the days of your knowledge ? The 
time will come when you will see deeper into your own 
hearts than now, and will be humbled, like not a few other 
men, by what you behold.” 


CHAFER XVI. 

THE butcher’s SHOP. 

About four years previous to the time of which I am now 
writing, and while yet Mr. Drake was in high repute among 
the people of Cowlane chapel, he went to London to visit 
an old friend, a woman of great practical benevolence, exer- 
cised chiefly toward orphans. Just then her thoughts and 
feelings were largely occupied with a lovely little girl, the 
chain of whose history had been severed at the last link, and 
lost utterly. 

A poor woman in Southwark had of her own motion, 
partly from love to children and compassion for both them 
and their mothers, partly to earn her own bread with pleas- 
ure, established a sort of creche in her two rooms, where 


88 


PAUL FABER. 


mothers who had work from home could bring their children 
in the morning, and leave them till night. The child had 
been committed to her charge day after day for some weeks. 
One morning, when she brought her, the mother seemed 
out of health, and did not appear at night to take her home. 
The next day the woman heard she was in the small-pox- 
hospital. For a week or so, the money to pay for the child 
came almost regularly, in postage-stamps, then ceased 
altogether, and the woman heard nothing either from or of 
the mother. After a fortnight she contrived to go to the 
hospital to inquire after her. No one corresponding to her 
description was in the place. The name was a common one, 
and several patients bearing it had lately died and been 
buried, while others had recovered and were gone. Her 
inquiries in the neighborhood had no better success : no one 
knew her, and she did not even discover where she had 
lived. She could not bear the thought of taking the child 
to the work-house, and kept her for six or eight weeks, but 
she had a sickly son, a grown lad, to support, and in dread 
lest she should be compelled to give her up to the parish, 
had applied for counsel to the lady I have mentioned. When 
Mr. Drake arrived, she had for some time been searching 
about in vain to find a nest for her. 

Since his boys had been taken from him, and the unprized 
girl left behind had grown so precious, Mr. Drake had 
learned to love children as the little ones of God. He had 
no doubt,, like many people, a dread of children with 
unknown antecedents : who could tell what root of bitter- 
ness, beyond the common inheritance, might spring up in 
them ? But all that was known of this one’s mother was 
unusually favorable ; and when his friend took him to see the 
child, his heart yearned after her. He took her home to 
Dorothy, and she had grown up such as we have seen her, 
a wild, roguish, sweet, forgetful, but not disobedient child 
— very dear to both the Drakes, who called her their 
duckling. 

As we have seen, however, Mr. Drake had in his adver- 
sity grown fearful and faint-hearted, and had begun to 
doubt whether he had a right to keep her. And of course 
he had not, if it was to be at the expense of his trades- 
people. But he was of an impetuous nature, and would not 
give even God time to do the thing that needed time to Oe 
done well. He saw a crisis was at hand. Perhaps, how- 
ever, God saw a spiritual, where he saw a temporal crisis. 


PAUL FABER. 


89 


Dorothy had a small sum, saved by her mother, so 
invested as to bring her about twenty pounds a year, and of 
the last payment she had two pounds in hand. Her father 
had nothing, and quarter-day was two months off. This 
was the common knowledge of their affairs at which they 
arrived as they sat at breakfast on the Monday morning, 
after the saddest Sunday either of them had ever spent. 
They had just risen from the table, and the old woman was 
removing the cloth, when a knock came to the lane-door, 
and she went to open it, leaving the room-door ajar, where- 
by the minister caught a glimpse of a blue apron, and feel- 
ing himself turning sick, sat down again. Lisbeth re-en- 
tered with a rather greasy-looking note, which was of course 
from the butcher, and Mr. Drake’s hand trembled as he 
opened it. Mr. Jones wrote that he would not have troubled 
him, had he not asked for his bill ; but, if it was quite conven- 
ient, he would be glad to have the amount by the end of 
the week, as he had a heavy payment to make the following 
Monday. Mr. Drake handed the note to his daughter, rose 
hastily, and left the room. Dorothy threw it down half-read, 
and followed him. He was opening the door, his hat in his 
hand. 

“ Where are you going in such a hurry, father dear ? ” she 
said. “ Wait a moment and I’ll go with you.” 

“ My child, there is not a moment to lose ! ” he replied 
excitedly. 

“I did not read all the letter,” she returned; “but I think 
he does not want the money till the end of the week.” 

“ And what better shall we be then ? ” he rejoined, almost 
angrily. “ The man looks to me, and where will he find 
himself on Monday ? Let us be as honest at least as we can.” 

“ But we may be able to borrow it — or — who knows what 
might happen ? ” 

“ There it is, my dear ! Who knows what ? We can be 
sure of nothing in this world.” 

“ And what in the next, father ? ” 

The minister was silent. If God was anywhere, he was 
here as much as there ! That was not the matter in hand, 
however. He owed the money, and was bound to let the 
man know that he could not pay it by the end of the week. 
Without another word to Dorothy, he walked from the 
house, and, like a man afraid of cowardice, went straight at 
the object of his dismay. He was out of the lane and well 
into Pine street before he thought to put on his hat. 


90 


PAUL FABER. 


From afar he saw the butcher, standing in front of his 
shop — a tall, thin man in blue. His steel glittered by his 
side, and a red nightcap hung its tassel among the curls 
of his gray hair. He was discussing, over a small joint of 
mutton, some point of economic interest with a country 
customer in a check-shawl. To the minister’s annoyance 
the woman was one of his late congregation, and he would 
gladly have passed the shop, had he had the courage. 
When he came near, the butcher turned from the woman, 
and said, taking his nightcap by the tassel in rudimentary 
obeisance. 

“ At your service, sir." 

His courtesy added to Mr. Drake’s confusion : it was 
plain the man imagined he had brought him his money ! 
Times were indeed changed since his wife used to drive 
out in her brougham to pay the bills ! Was this what a man 
had for working in the vineyard the better part of a lifetime ? 
The property he did not heed. That had been the portion 
of the messengers of heaven from the first. But the shame ! 
— what was he to do with that ? Who ever heard of St. 
Paul not being able to pay a butcher’s bill ! No doubt St. 
Paul was a mighty general, and he but a poor subaltern, 
but in the service there was no respect of persons. On the 
other hand, who ever heard of St. Paul having any bills to 
pay ! — or for that matter, indeed, of his marrying a rich 
wife, and getting into expensive habits through popular- 
ity ! Who ever heard of his being dependent on a congre- 
gation ! He accepted help sometimes, but had always his 
goats’-hair and his tent-making to fall back upon ! — Only, 
after all, was the Lord never a hard master ? Had he not 
let it come to this ? 

Much more of the sort went through his mind in a flash. 
The country woman had again drawn the attention of the 
butcher with a parting word. 

“ You don’t want a chicken to-day — do you, Mr. Drake ?” 
she said, as she turned to go. 

No, thank you, Mrs. Thomson. How is your husband ? ” 

“ Better, I thank you sir. Good morning, sir." 

“ Mr. Jones," said the minister — and as he spoke, he 
stepped inside the shop, removed his hat, and wiped his 
forehead, “ I come to you with shame. I have not money 
enough to pay your bill. Indeed I can not even pay a por- 
tion of it till next quarter-day." 

** Don’t mention it, Mr. Drake, sir.” 


PAUL FABER. 


91 


“But your bill on Monday, Mr. Jones ! ” 

“ Oh ! never mind that. I shall do very well, I dare say. 
I have a many as owes me a good deal more than you do, 
sir, and I’m much obliged to you for letting of me know at 
once. You see, sir, if you hadn’t ” 

“ Yes, I know : I asked for it ! I am the sorrier I can’t 
pay it after all. It is quite disgraceful, but I simply can’t 
help it.” 

“ Disgraceful, sir ! ” exclaimed Mr. Jones, almost as if 
hurt : “ I wish they thought as you do as has ten times the 
reason, sir ! ” 

“ But I have a request to make,” the pastor went on, 
heedless of the butcher’s remark, and pulling out a large 
and handsome gold watch : “ Would you oblige me by 
taking this watch in security until I do pay you ? It is worth 
a great deal more than your bill. It would add much to 
the obligation, if you would put it out of sight somewhere, 
and say nothing about it. If I should die before paying 
your bill, you will be at liberty to sell it ; and what is over, 
after deducting interest, you will kindly hand to my 
daughter.” 

Mr. Jones stared with open mouth. He thought the 
minister had lost his senses. 

“ What do you make of me, sir ? ” he said at last. “ You 
go for to trust me with a watch like that, and fancy I 
wouldn’t trust you with a little bill that ain’t been owing 
three months yet ! You make me that I don’t know myself, 
sir ! Never you mention the bill to me again, sir. I’ll ask 
for it, all in good time. Can I serve you with any thing to- 
day, sir ? ” 

“No, I thank you. I must at least avoid adding to my 
debt.” 

“ I hope what you do have, you’ll have of me, sir. I 
don’t mind waiting a goodish bit for my money, but what 
cuts me to the heart is to see any one as owes me money a 
goin’ over the way, as if ’e ’adn’t ’a’ found my meat good 
enough to serve his turn, an’ that was why he do it. That 
does rile me ! ” 

“ Take my word for it, Mr. Jones — all the meat we have 
we shall have of you. But we must be careful. You see I 
am not quite so — so — ” 

He stopped with a sickly smile. 

“ Look ye here, Mr. Drake ! ” broke in the butcher : 
“you parsons ain’t proper brought up. You ain’t learned 


92 


PAUL FABER. 


to take care of yourselves. Now us tradespeople, we’re 
learned from the first to look arter number one, and not on 
no account to forget which is number one. But you parsons, 
now, — you’ll excuse me, sir ; I don’t mean no offense ; you 
ain’t brought up to ’t, an’ it ain’t to be expected of you — 
but it’s a great neglect in your eddication, sir ; an’ the con- 
sekence is as how us as knows better ’as to take care on 
you as don’t know no better. I can’t say I think much o’ 
them ’senters : they don’t stick by their own ; but you’re a 
honest man, sir, if ever there was a honest man as was 
again’ the church, an’ ask you for that money, I never will, 
acause I know when you can pay, it’s pay you will. Keep 
your mind easy, sir : I shan’t come to grief for lack o’ what 
you owe me ! Only don’t you go a starving of yourself, Mr. 
Drake. I don’t hold with that nohow. Have a bit o’ meat 
when you want it, an’ don’t think over it twice. There ! ” 

The minister was just able to thank his new friend and 
no more. He held out his hand to him, forgetful of the 
grease that had so often driven him from the pavement to 
the street. The butcher gave it a squeeze that nearly shot 
it out of his lubricated grasp, and they parted, both better 
men for the interview. 

When Mr. Drake reached home, he met his daughter 
coming out to find him. He took her hand, led her into 
the house and up to his study, and closed the door. 

“ Dorothy,” he said, ‘‘ it is sweet to be humbled. The 
Spirit can bring water from the rock, and grace from a hard 
heart. I mean mine, not the butcher’s. He has behaved 
to me as I don’t see how any but a Christian could, and 
that although his principles are scarcely those of one who 
had given up all for the truth. He is like the son in the 
parable who said, I go not, but went ; while I, much I fear 
me, am like the other who said, I go, sir, but went not. 
Alas ! I have always found it hard to be grateful ; there is 
something in it unpalatable to the old Adam ; but from the 
bottom of my heart I thank Mr. Jones, and I will pray God 
for him ere I open a book. Dorothy, I begin to doubt our 
way of church-membership. It may make the good better ; 
but if a bad one gets in, it certainly makes him worse. I 
begin to think too, that every minister ought to be inde- 
pendent of his flock — I do not mean by the pay of the state, 
God forbid ! but by having some trade or profession, if no 
fortune. Still, if I had had the money to pay that bill, I 
should now be where I am glad not to be — up on my castle- 


PAUL FABER. 


93 


top, instead of down at the gate. He has made me poor 
that He might send me humility, and that I find unspeak- 
ably precious. Perhaps He will send me the money next. 
But may it not be intended also to make us live more 
simply — on vegetables perhaps ? Do you not remember how 
it fared with Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, when 
they refused the meat and the wine, and ate pulse instead ? 
At the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer 
and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the 
portion of the king’s meat. Pulse, you know, means peas 
and beans, and every thing of that kind — which is now 
proved to be almost as full of nourishment as meat itself, 
and to many constitutions more wholesome. Let us have 
a dinner of beans. You can buy haricot beans at the 
grocer’s — can you not ? If Ducky does not thrive on them, 
or they don’t agree with you, my Dorothy, you will have 
only to drop them. I am sure they will agree with me. 
But let us try, and then the money I owe Mr. Jones, will 
not any longer hang like a millstone about my neck.” 

“ We will begin this very day,” said Dorothy, delighted 
to see her father restored to equanimity. “ I will go and 
see after a dinner of herbs. — We shall have love with it any- 
how, father ! ” she added, kissing him. 

That day the minister, who in his earlier days had been 
allowed by his best friends to be a little particular about 
his food, and had been no mean connoisseur in wines, found 
more pleasure at his table, from lightness of heart, and the 
joy of a new independence, than he had had for many a 
day. It added much also to his satisfaction with the 
experiment, that, instead of sleeping, as his custom was, 
after dinner, he was able to read without drowsiness even. 
Perhaps Dorothy’s experience was not quite so satisfactory, 
for she looked weary when they sat down to tea. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE PARLOR AGAIN. 

Faber had never made any effort to believe in a divine 
order of things — indeed he had never made strenuous effort 
to believe in any thing. It had never at all occurred to him 


94 


PAUL FABER. 


that it might be a duty to believe. He was a kindly and 
not a repellent man, but when he doubted another, he doubted 
him ; it never occurred to him that perhaps he ought to 
believe in that man. There must be a lack of something, 
where a man's sense of duty urges him mainly to denial. 
His existence is a positive thing — his main utterance ought 
to be positive. I would not forget that the nature of a 
denial may be such as to involve a strong positive. 

To Faber it seemed the true and therefore right thing, 
to deny the existence of any such being as men call God. 
I heartily admit that such denial may argue a nobler con- 
dition than that of the man who will reason for the existence 
of what he calls a Deity, but omits to order his way after 
what he professes to believe Flis will. At the same time, his 
conclusion that he was not bound to believe in any God, 
seemed to lift a certain weight off the heart of the doctor — 
the weight, namely, that gathers partly from the knowledge 
of having done wrong things, partly from the consciousness 
of not being altogether right. It would be very unfair, how- 
ever, to leave the impression that this was the origin of all 
the relief the doctor derived from the conclusion. For 
thereby he got rid, in a great measure at least, of the notion 
— horrible in proportion to the degree in which it is actually 
present to the mind, although, I suspect, it is not, in a true 
sense, credible to any mind — of a cruel, careless, unjust 
Being at the head of affairs. That such a notion should 
exist at all, is mainly the fault of the mass of so-called reli- 
gious people, for they seem to believe in, and certainly pro- 
claim such a God. In their excuse it may be urged they 
tell the tale as it was told to them ; but the fault lies in this, 
that, with the gospel in their hands, they have yet lived in 
such disregard of its precepts, that they have never dis- 
covered their representation of the God of Truth to be such, 
that the more honest a man is, the less can he accept it. 
That the honest man, however, should not thereupon set 
himself to see whether there might not be a true God 
notwithstanding, whether such a God was not conceivable 
consistently with things as they are, whether the believers 
had not distorted the revelation they professed to follow ; 
especially that he should prefer to believe in some sort 
of vitalic machine, equally void of beneficence and 
malevolence, existing because it can not help it, and 
giving birth to all sorts of creatures, men and women in- 
cluded, because it can not help it — must arise from a con- 


PAUL FABER. 


95 


dition of being, call it spiritual, moral, or mental — I can 
not be obliging enough to add cerebral, because so I should 
nullify my conclusion, seeing there would be no substance 
left wherein it could be wrought out — for which the man, I 
can not but think, will one day discover that he was ’to 
blame — for which a living God sees that he is to blame, 
makes all the excuse he can, and will give the needful pun- 
ishment to the uttermost lash. 

There are some again, to whom the idea of a God 
perfect as they could imagine Him in love and devotion 
and truth, seems, they say, too good to be true : such 
have not yet perceived that no God any thing less 
than absolutely glorious in loveliness would be worth 
believing in, or such as the human soul could believe 
in. But Faber did not belong to this class — still less 
to that portion of it whose inconsolable grief over the 
lack of such a God may any day blossom into hope of 
finding Him. He was in practice at one with that 
portion of it who, accepting things at their worst, find 
alleviation for their sorrows in the strenuous effort to 
make the best of them ; but he sought to content himself 
with the order of things which, blind and deaf and non- 
willing, he said had existed for evermore, most likely — the 
thing was hardly worth discussing ; blind, for we can not 
see that it sees ; deaf, for we can not hear that it hears ; 
and without will, for we see no strife, purpose, or change 
in its going ! 

There was no God, then, and people would be more 
comfortable to know it. In any case, as there was none, 
they ought to know it. As to his certainty of there being 
none, Faber felt no desire to find one, had met with no proof 
that there was one, and had reasons for supposing that 
there was none. He had not searched very long or 
very wide, or with any eager desire to discover Him, if in- 
deed there should be a God that hid Himself. His 
genial nature delighted in sympathy, and he sought it 
even in that whose perfect operation, is the destruction of 
all sympathy. Who does not know the pleasure of that 
moment of nascent communion, when argument or expostu- 
lation has begun to tell, conviction begins to dawn, and the 
first faint thrill of response is felt ? But the joy may be 
either of two very different kinds — delight in victory and the 
personal success of persuasion, or the ecstasy of the shared 
vision of truth, in which contact souls come nearer to each 


96 


PAUL FABER. 


Other than any closest familiarity can effect. Such a near- 
ness can be brought about by no negation however genuine, 
or however evil may be the thing denied. 

Sympathy, then, such as he desired, Faber was now bent on 
finding, or bringing about in Juliet Meredith. He would 
fain get nearer to her. Something pushed, something drew 
him toward the lovely phenomenon into which had flow- 
ered invisible Nature’s bud of shapeless protoplasm. He 
would have her trust him, believe him, love him. If he 
succeeded, so much the greater would be the value and the 
pleasure of the conquest, that it had been gained in spite of 
all her prejudices of education and conscience. And if in 
the process of finding truth a home in her bosom, he should 
cause her pain even to agony, would not the tenderness 
born of their lonely need for each other, be far more con- 
soling than any mere aspiration after a visionary comforter ? 

Juliet had been, so far as her father was concerned in her 
education, religiously brought up. No doubt Captain 
Meredith was more fervid than he was reasonable, but he 
was a true man, and in his regiment, on which he brought 
all his influence to bear, had been regarded with respect, 
even where not heartily loved. But her mother was one of 
those weakest of women who can never forget the beauty 
they once possessed, or quite believe they have lost it, re- 
maining, even after the very traces of it have vanished, as 
greedy as ever of admiration. Her maxims and principles, 
if she could be said to have any of the latter, were not a 
little opposed to her husband’s; but she died when Juliet 
was only five years old, and the child grew to be almost the 
companion of her father. Hence it came that she heard much 
religious conversation, often partaking not a little of the 
character of discussion and even of dispute. She thus be- 
came familiar with the forms of a religious belief as narrow 
as its partisans are numerous. \Her heart did not remain 
uninterested, but she was never in earnest sufficiently to 
discover what a thing of beggarly elements the system was, 
and how incapable of satisfying any childlike soul. She 
never questioned the truth of what she heard, and became 
skilled in its idioms and arguments and forms of thought. 
But the more familiar one becomes with any religious 
system, while yet the conscience and will are unawakened 
and obedience has not begun, the harder is it to enter into 
the kingdom of heaven. Such familiarity is a soul-killing 
experience, and great will be the excuse for some of those 


PAUL FABER. 


97 

sons of religious parents who have gone further toward 
hell than many born and bred thieves and sinners. 

When Juliet came to understand clearly that her new 
friend did mean thorough-going unbelief, the rejection of 
all the doctrines she had been taught by him whose memory 
she revered, she was altogether shocked, and for a day and a 
night regarded him as a monster of wickedness. But her 
horror was mainly the reflex of that with which her father 
would have regarded him, and all that was needed to mod- 
erate horror to disapproval, was familiarity with his doc- 
trines in the light of his agreeable presence and undeniable 
good qualities. Thoroughly acquainted as she believed 
herself with “the plan of salvation," Jesus of Nazareth was 
to her but the vague shadow of something that was more 
than a man, yet no man at all. I had nearly said that what 
He came to reveal had become to her yet more vague from 
her nebulous notion of Him who was its revelation. Her 
religion was, as a matter of course, as dusky and uncertain, 
as the object-center of it was obscure and unrealized. Since 
her father’s death and her comparative isolation, she had 
read and thought a good deal ; some of my readers may 
even think she had read and thought to tolerable purposes 
judging from her answers to Faber in the first serious con- 
versation they had ; but her religion had lain as before in a 
state of dull quiescence, until her late experience, realizing 
to her the idea of the special care of which she stood so 
much in need, awoke in her a keen sense of delight, and if 
not a sense of gratitude as well, yet a dull desire to be 
grateful. 

The next day, as she sat pondering what had passed be- 
tween them, altogether unaware of her own weakness, she 
was suddenly seized with the ambition — in its inward rela- 
tions the same as his — of converting him to her belief. 
The purpose justified an interest in him beyond what grati- 
tude obligated, and was in part the cause why she neither 
shrank from his society, nor grew alarmed at the rapid 
growth of her intimacy. But they only who love the truth 
simply and altogether, can really know what they are about. 

I do not care to follow the intellectual duel between them. 
Argument, save that of a man with himself, when council 
is held between heart, will, imagination, conscience, vision, 
and intellect, is of little avail or worth. Nothing, however, 
could have suited Faber’s desires better. Under the shadow 
of such difficulties as the wise man ponders and the fool 


98 


PAUL FABER. 


flaunts, difficulties which have been difficulties from the 
dawn of human thought, and will in new shapes keep return- 
ing so long as the human understanding yearns to infold 
its origin, Faber brought up an array of arguments utterly 
destructive of the wretched theories of forms of religion 
which were all she had to bring into the field : so wretched 
and false were they — feeblest she found them just where 
she had regarded them as invincible — that in destroying 
them Faber did even a poor part of the work of a soldier of 
God : Mephistopheles describes himself as 

Ein Theil von jener Kraft, 

Die stets das Bose will, und stets das Gute schafft, 

. . . . der Geist der stets verneint. 

For the nature of Juliet’s argument I must be content to 
refer any curious reader to the false defenses made, and lies 
spoken for God, in many a pulpit and many a volume, by the 
worshipers of letter and system, who for their sakes “ accept 
His person,” and plead unrighteously for Him. Before the 
common sense of Faber, they went down like toys, and 
Juliet, without consciously yielding at first, soon came 
to perceive that they were worse than worthless — weapons 
whose handles were sharper than their blades. She had no 
others, nor metal of which to make any ; and what with the 
persuasive influence of the man, and the pleasure in the mere 
exercise of her understanding, became more and more in- 
terested as she saw the drift of his argument, and appre- 
hended the weight of what truth lay upon his side. * For 
even the falsest argument is sustained in virtue of some 
show of truth, or perhaps some crumb of reality belonging 
to it. The absolute lie, if such be frameable by lips of men, 
can look only the blackness of darkness it is. The lie that 
can hurt, hurts in the strength of the second lie in which it 
is folded — a likeness to the truth. It would have mattered 
little that she was driven from line after line of her defense, 
had she not, while she seemed to herself to be its champion, 
actually lost sight of that for which she thought she was 
striving. 

It added much to Faber’s influence on Juliet, that a tone 
of pathos and an element of poetry generally pervaded the 
forms of his denial. The tone was the more penetrating 
that it veiled the pride behind it all, the pride namely of an 
unhealthy conscious individuality, the pride of self as self, 


PAUL FABER. 


99 


which makes a man the center of his own universe, and a 
mockery to all the demons of the real universe. That man 
only who rises above the small yet mighty predilection, who 
sets the self of his own consciousness behind his back, and 
cherishes only the self of the Father’s thought, the angel 
that beholds the eternal face, that man only is a free and 
noble being, he only breathes the air of the infinite. Another 
may well deny the existence of any such Father, any such 
infinite, for he knows nothing of the nature of either, and 
his testimony for it would be as worthless as that is which 
he gives against it. 

The nature of Juliet Meredith was true and trusting — 
but in respect of her mother she had been sown in weak- 
ness, and she was not yet raised in strength. Because of 
his wife. Captain Meredith had more than once had to 
exchange regiments. But from him Juliet had inherited 
a certain strength of honest purpose, which had stood him 
in better stead than the whole sum of his gifts and acquire- 
ments, which was by no means despicable. 

Late one lovely evening in the early summer, they sat 
together in the dusky parlor of the cottage, with the window 
to the garden open. The sweetest of western airs came in, 
with a faint scent chiefly of damp earth, moss, and primroses, 
in which, to the pensive imagination, the faded yellow of 
the sunset seemed to bear a part. 

“ I am sorry to say we must shut the window. Miss 
Meredith,” said the doctor, rising. “ You must always be 
jealous of the night air. It will never be friendly to you.” 

“ What enemies we have all about us ! ” she returned with 
a slight shiver, which Faber attributed to the enemy in ques- 
tion, and feared his care had not amounted to precaution. 
“ It is strange,” she went on, “ that all things should con- 
spire, or at least rise, against ‘ the roof and crown of things,’ 
as Tennyson calls us. Are they jealous of us ? ” 

“ Clearly, at all events, we are not at home amidst them 
— not genuinely so,” admitted the doctor. 

“ And yet you say we are sprung of them ? ” said Juliet. 

“ We have lifted ourselves above them,” rejoined the 
doctor, “ and must conquer them next.” 

“And until we conquer them,” suggested Juliet, “our 
lifting above them is in vain ? ” 

“ For we return to them,” assented Faber ; and silence 
fell. — “ Yes,” he resumed, “ it is sad. The upper air is 
sweet, and the heart of man loves the sun ; — ” 


lOO 


PAUL FABER. 


“Then,” interrupted Juliet, “why would you have me 
willing to go down to the darkness ? ” 

“ I would not have you willing. I would have you love 
the light as you do. We can not but love the light, for it is 
good ; and the sorrow that we must leave it, and that so 
soon, only makes it dearer. The sense of coming loss is, or 
ought to be, the strongest of all bonds between the creatures 
of a day. The sweetest, saddest, most entrancing songs 
that love can sing, must be but variations on this one 
theme. — ‘ The morning is clear ; the dew mounts heaven- 
ward ; the odor spreads ; the sun looks over the hill ; the 
world breaks into laughter ; let us love one another ! The 
sun grows hot, the shadow lies deep ; let us sit in it, and 
remember ; the sea lies flashing in green, dulled with purple ; 
the peacock spreads his glories, a living garden of flowers ; 
all is mute but the rush of the stream ; let us love one 
another ! The soft evenihg draws nigh ; the dew is coming 
down again ; the air is cool, dusky, and thin ; it is sweeter 
than the morning ; other words of death gleam out of the 
deepening sky ; the birds close their wings and hide their 
heads, for death is near : let us love one another ! The 
night is come, and there is no morrow ; it is dark ; the end 
is nigh ; it grows cold ; in the darkness and the cold we 
tremble, we sink ; a moment and we are no more ; ah ! ah, 
beloved ! let us love, let us cleave to one another, for we 
die ! ’ ” 

But it seems to me, that the pitifulness with which we 
ought to regard each other in the horror of being the off- 
spring of a love we do not love, in the danger of wandering 
ever, the children of light, in the midst of darkness, immeas- 
urably surpasses the pitifulness demanded by the fancy that 
we are the creatures of but a day. 

Moved in his soul by the sound of his own words, but 
himself the harp upon which the fingers of a mightier 
Nature than he knew were playing a prelude to a grander 
phantasy than he could comprehend, Faber caught the hand 
of Juliet where it gleamed white in the gathering gloom. 
But she withdrew it, saying in a tone which through the 
darkness seemed to him to come from afar, tinged with 
mockery. 

“ You ought to have been a poet — not a doctor, Mr. 
Faber ! ” 

The jar of her apparent coolness brought him back with 
a shock to the commonplace. He almost shuddered. It 
was like a gust of icy wind piercing a summer night. 


PAUL FABER. 


lOI 


“ I trust the doctor can rule the poet,” he said, recover- 
ing his self-possession with an effort, and rising. 

“ The doctor ought at least to keep the poet from false- 
hood. Is false poetry any better than false religion ? ” 
returned Juliet. 

“ I dc not quite see — ” 

“ Your day is not a true picture of life such as you would 
make it. — Let me see ! I will give you one. — Sit down. — 

Give me time. ‘ The morning is dark ; the mist hangs 

and will not rise ; the sodden leaves sink under the foot ; 
overhead the boughs are bare ; the cold creeps into bone 
and marrow ; let us love one another ! The sun is buried in 
miles of vapor ; the birds sit mute on the damp twigs ; the 
gathered drizzle slowly drips from the eaves ; the wood will 
not burn in the grate ; there is a crust in the larder, no wine 
in the cellar : let us love one another ! ’ ” 

“ Yes ! ” cried Faber, again seizing her hand, “ let us but 
love, and I am content ! ” 

Again she withdrew it. 

“ Nay, but hear my song out,” she said, turning her face 
towards the window. — In the fading light he saw a wild look 
of pain, which vanished in a strange, bitter smile as she 
resumed. — “ ‘ The ashes of life’s volcano are falling ; they 
bepowder my hair ; its fires have withered the rose of my 
lips ; my forehead is wrinkled, my cheeks are furrowed, my 
brows are sullen ; I am weary, and discontented, and 
unlovely : ah, let us love one another ! The wheels of time 
grind on ; my heart is sick, and cares not for thee ; I care 
not for myself, and thou art no longer lovely to me ; I 
can no more recall wherefore I desired thee once ; I long 
only for the endless sleep ; death alone hath charms : 
to say. Let us love one another, were now a mockery too 
bitter to be felt. Even sadness is withered. No more can 
it make me sorrowful to brood over the days that are gone, 
or to remember the song that once would have made my 
heart a fountain of tears. Ah, hah ! the folly to think we 
could love to the end ! But I care not ; the fancy served its 
turn ; and there is a grave for thee and me — apart or 
together I care not, so I cease. Thou needst not love me 
any more ; I care not for thy love. I hardly care for the 
blessed darkness itself. Give me no sweet oblivious anti- 
dote, no precious poison such as I once prayed for when 
I feared the loss of love, that it might open to me the gate 
of forgetfulness, take me softly in unseen ‘arms, and sink 


102 


PAUL FABER. 


with me into the during dark. No ; I will, not calmly, but 
in utter indifference, await the end. I do not love thee ; 
but I can eat, and I enjoy my wine, and my rubber of 
whist ’ ” 

She broke into a dreadful laugh. It was all horribly un- 
natural ! She rose, and in the deepening twilight seemed to 
draw herself up far beyond her height, then turned, and 
looked out on the shadowy last of the sunset. Faber rose 
also. He felt her shudder, though she was not within two 
arm’s-lengths of him. He sprang to her side. 

“ Miss Meredith — Juliet — you have suffered ! The world 
has been too hard for you ! Let me do all I can to make up 
for it ! I too know what suffering is, and my heart is bleed- 
ing for you ! ” 

“ What ! are you not part of the world ? Are you not her 
last-born — the perfection of her heartlessness? — and will 
you act the farce of consolation ? Is it the last stroke of the 
eternal mockery ? ” 

“ Juliet,” he said, and once more took her hand, “ I love 
you.” 

“ As a man may ! ” she rejoined with scorn, and pulled 
her hand from his grasp. “ No ! such love as you can give, 
is too poor even for me. Love you I will not. If you 
speak to me so again, you will drive me away. Talk to me 
as you will of your void idol. Tell me of the darkness of 
his dwelling, and the sanctuary it affords to poor, tormented, 
specter-hunted humanity ; but do not talk to me of love 
also, for where your idol is, love can not be.” 

Faber made a gentle apology, and withdrew — abashed and 
hurt — vexed with himself, and annoyed with his failure. 

The moment he was gone, she cast herself on the sofa 
with a choked scream, and sobbed, and ground her teeth, 
but shed no tear. Life had long been poor, arid, vague ; 
now there was not left even the luxury of grief ! Where all 
was loss, no loss was worth a tear. 

It were good for me that I had never been born ! ” 
she cried. 

But the doctor came again and again, and looked devotion, 
though he never spoke of love. He avoided also for a time 
any further pressing of his opinions — talked of poetry, of 
science, of nature — all he said tinged with the same sad 
glow. Then by degrees direct denial came up again, and 
Juliet scarcely attempted opposition. Gradually she got 
quite used to his doctrine, and as she got used to it, it 


PAUL FABER. 


103 


seemed less dreadful, and rather less sad. What wicked- 
ness could there be in denying a God whom the very works 
attributed to him declared not to exist ! Mr. Faber was a 
man of science, and knew it. She could see for herself that 
it must draw closer the bonds between human beings, to 
learn that there was no such power to hurt them or aid them, 
or to claim lordship over them, and enslave them to his will. 
For Juliet had never had a glimpse of the idea, that in one- 
ness with the love-creating Will, alone lies freedom for the 
love created. When Faber perceived that his words had 
begun and continued to influence her, he, on his part, grew 
more kindly disposed toward her superstitions. 

Let me here remark that, until we see God as He is, and 
are changed into His likeness, all our beliefs must partake 
more or less of superstition ; but if there be a God, the 
greatest superstition of all will be found to have consisted 
in denying him. 

“ Do not think me incapable,” he said one day, after they 
had at length slid back into their former freedom with each 
other, “ of seeing much that is lovely and gracious in the 
orthodox fancies of religion. Much depends, of course, 
upon the nature of the person who holds them. No belief 
could be beautiful in a mind that is unlovely. A sonnet of 
Shakespeare can be no better than a burned cinder in such a 
mind as Mrs. Ramshorn’s. But there is Mr. Wingfold, 
the curate of the abbey-church ! a true, honest man, who 
will give even an infidel like me fair play : nothing that 
finds acceptance with him can be other than noble, whether 
it be true or not. I fear he expects me to come over to 
him one day. I am sorry he will be disappointed, for he is 
a fellow quite free from the flummery of his profession. 
For my part, I do not see why two friends should not con- 
sent to respect each other’s opinions, letting the one do his 
best without a God to hinder him, and the other his best 
with his belief in one to aid him. Such a pair might be the 
most emulous of rivals in good works.” 

Juliet returned no satisfactory response to this tentative 
remark ; but it was from no objection any longer in her 
mind to such a relation in the abstract. She had not yet at 
all consented with herself to abandon the faith of her father, 
but she did not see, and indeed it were hard for any one in 
her condition to see, why a man and a woman, the one deny- 
ing after Faber’s fashion, the other believing after hers, 
should not live together, and love and help each other. Of all 


104 


PAUL FABER. 


valueless things, a merely speculative theology is one of the 
most valueless. To her, God had never been much more than 
a name — a name, it is true, that always occurred to her in 
any vivid moment of her life ; but the Being whose was that 
name, was vague to her as a storm of sand — hardly so much 
her father as was the first forgotten ancestor of her line. And 
now it was sad for her that at such a time of peculiar emo- 
tion, when the heart is ready to turn of itself toward its 
unseen origin, feeling after the fountain of its love, the very 
occasion of the tide Godward should be an influence de- 
structive of the same. Under the growing fascination of the 
handsome, noble-minded doctor, she was fast losing what 
little shadow of faith she had possessed. The theology she 
had attempted to defend was so faulty, so unfair to God, 
that Faber’s atheism had an advantage over it as easy a^ it 
was great. His unbelief was less selfish than Juliet’s faith ; 
consequently her faith sank, as her conscience rose meeting 
what was true in Faber’s utterances. How could it be other- 
wise when she opposed lies uttered for the truth, to truths 
uttered for the lie ? the truth itself she had never been true 
enough to look in the face. As her arguments, yea the 
very things she argued for, went down before him, her faith, 
which, to be faith, should have been in the living source of 
all true argument, found no object, was swept away like the 
uprooted weed it was, and whelmed in returning chaos. 

“ If such is your God,” he said, “ I do Him a favor in 
denying His existence, for His very being would be a dis- 
grace to Himself. At times, as I go my rounds, and think 
of the horrors of misery and suffering before me, 1 feel as 
if I were out on a campaign against an Evil supreme, the 
Author of them all. But when I reflect that He must then 
actually create from very joy in the infliction and sight of 
agony, I am ashamed of my foolish and cruel, though but 
momentary imagination, and — ‘ There can be no such 
being ! ’ I say. “ I but labor in a region of inexorable law, 
blind as Justice herself ; law that works for good in the 
main, and whose carelessness of individual suffering it is 
for me, and ail who know in any way how, to supplement 
with the individual care of man for his fellow-men, who, 
either from Nature’s own necessity, or by neglect or viola- 
tion of her laws, find themselves in a sea of troubles.” For 
Nature herself, to the man who will work in harmony with 
her, affords the means of alleviation, of restoration even — ■ 
who knows if not of something better still ? — the means, 


PAUL FABER. 


105 

that is, of encountering the ills that result from the breach 
of her own laws ; and the best the man who would help his 
fellows can do, is to search after and find such other laws, 
whose applied operation will restore the general conduction, 
and render life after all an endurable, if not a desirable 
thing.” 

“ But you can do nothing with death,” said Juliet. 

“ Nothing — yet — alas ! ” 

“ Is death a law, or a breach of law, then ? ” she asked. 

“ That is a question I can not answer.” 

“ In any case, were it not better to let the race die out, 
instead of laboriously piecing and patching at a too old 
garment, and so leave room for a new race to come up, 
which the fruit of experience, both sweet and bitter, left 
behind in books, might enable to avoid like ruin ? ” 

“ Ages before they were able to read our books, they 
would have broken the same laws, found the same evils, 
and be as far as we are now beyond the help of foregone 
experiences : ' they would have the experience itself, of 
whose essence it is, that it is still too late.” 

“ Then would not the kindest thing be to poison the race 
— as men on the prairies meet fire with fire — and so with 
death foil Death and have done with dying ? ” 

“ It seems to me better to live on in the hope that some- 
one may yet — in some far-off age it may only be, but what 
a thing if it should be ! — discover the law of death, learn 
how to meet it, and, with its fore-runners, disease and 
decay, banish it from the world. Would you crush the 
dragonfly, the moth, or the bee, because its days are so 
few ? Rather would you not pitifully rescue them, that they 
might enjoy to their natural end the wild intoxication of 
being ? ” 

“ Ah, but they are happy while they live ! ” 

“ So also are men — all men — for parts of their time. 
How many, do you think, would thank me for the offered 
poison ? ” 

Talk after talk of this kind, which the scope of my history 
forbids me to follow, took place between them, until at 
length Juliet, generally silenced, came to be silenced not 
unwillingly. All the time, their common humanity, each 
perceiving that the other had suffered, was urging to mutual 
consolation. And all the time, that mysterious force, inscru- 
table as creation itself, which draws the individual man and 
woman together, was mightily at work between them — a 


PAUL FABER. 


io6 

force which, terrible as is the array of its attendant shad- 
ows, will at length appear to have been one of the most 
powerful in the redemption of the world. But Juliet did 
nothing, said nothing, to attract Faber. He would have 
cast himself before her as a slave begging an owner, but 
for something in her carriage which constantly prevented 
him. At one time he read it as an unforgotten grief, at 
another as a cherished affection, and trembled at the thought 
of the agonies that might be in store for him. 

Weeks passed, and he had not made one inquiry after a 
situation for her. It was not because he would gladly have 
prolonged the present arrangement of things, but that he 
found it almost impossible to bring himself to talk about 
her. If she would but accept him, he thought — then there 
would be no need ! But he dared not urge her — mainly 
from fear of failure, not at all from excess of modesty, seeing 
he soberly believed such love and devotion as his, worth the 
acceptance of any woman — even while he believed also, 
that to be loved of a true woman was the one only thing 
which could make up for the enormous swindle of life, in 
which man must ever be a sorrow to himself, as ever lag- 
ging behind his own child, his ideal. Even for this, the 
worm that must forever lie gnawing in the heart of human- 
ity, it would be consolation enough to pluck together the 
roses of youth ; they had it in their own power to die while 
their odor was yet red. Why did she repel him ? Doubtless, 
he concluded over and over again, because, with her lofty 
ideal of love, a love for this world only seemed to her a 
love not worth the stooping to take. If he could but per- 
suade her that the love offered in the agony of the fire 
must be a nobler love than that whispered from a bed of 
roses, then perhaps, dissolved in confluent sadness and 
sweetness, she would hold out to him the chalice of her 
heart, and the one pearl of the world would yet be his — a 
woman all his own — pure as a flower, sad as the night, and 
deep as nature unfathomable. 

He had a grand idea of woman. He had been built with 
a goddess-niche in his soul, and thought how he would 
worship the woman that could fill it. There was a time 
when she must, beyond question, be one whose radiant 
mirror had never reflected form of man but his : now he 
would be content if for him she would abjure and obliterate 
her past. To make the woman who had loved forget 
utterly, was a greater victory, he said, than to wake love in 


PAUL F*ABER. 


107 


the heart of a girl, and would yield him a finer treasure, a 
richer conquest. Only, pure as snow she must be — pure as 
the sun himself ! Paul Faber was absolutely tyrannous in 
his notions as to feminine purity. Like the diamond shield 
of Prince Arthur, Knight of Magnificence, must be the 
purity that would satisfy this lord of the race who could 
live without a God ! Was he then such a master of purity 
himself? one so immaculate that in him such aspiration 
was no presumption? Was what he knew himself to be, 
an idea to mate with his unspotted ideal ? The notion men 
have of their own worth, and of claims founded thereon, is 
amazing ; most amazing of all is what a man will set up to 
himself as the standard of the woman he will marry. What 
the woman may have a right to claim, never enters his 
thought. He never doubts the right or righteousness of 
aspiring to wed a woman between whose nature and his 
lies a gulf, wide as between an angel praising God, and a 
devil taking refuge from him in a swine. Never a shadow 
of compunction crosses the leprous soul, as he stretches 
forth his arms to infold the clean woman ! Ah, white dove ! 
thou must lie for a while among the pots. If only thy 
mother be not more to blame than the wretch that acts but 
after his kind ! He does not die of self-loathing ! how 
then could he imagine the horror of disgust with which a 
glimpse of him such as he is would blast the soul of the 
woman ? Yet has he — what is it ? — the virtue ? the pride ? 
or the cruel insolence ? — to shrink with rudest abhorrence 
from one who is, in nature and history and ruin, his fitting 
and proper mate ! To see only how a man will be content 
to be himself the thing which he scorns another for being, 
might well be enough to send any one crying to the God 
there may be, to come between him and himself. Lord ! 
what a turning of things upside down there will be one 
day ! What a setting of lasts first, and firsts last ! 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


THE PARK AT NESTLEY. 

Just inside the park, on a mossy knoll, a little way from 
the ancient wrought-iron gate that opened almost upon the 
one street of Owlkirk, the rector dug the foundation of his 
chapel — an oblong Gothic hall, of two squares and a half, 
capable of seating all in the parish nearer to it than to the 
abbey church. In his wife’s eyes, Mr. Bevis was now an 
absolute saint, for not only had he begun to build a chapel 
in his own grounds, but to read prayers in his own church ! 
She was not the only one, however, who remarked how 
devoutly he read them, and his presence was a great com- 
fort to Wingfold. He often objected to what his curate 
preached — but only to his face, and seldom when they were 
not alone. There was policy in this restraint ; he had come 
to see that in all probability he would have to give in — that 
his curate would most likely satisfy him that he was right. 
The relation between them was marvelous and lovely. The 
rector’s was a quiet awakening, a gentle second birth almost 
in old age. But then he had been but a boy all the time, and a 
very good sort of boy. He had acted in no small measure 
according to the light he had, and time was of course given 
him to grow in. It is not the world alone that requires the 
fullness of its time to come, ere it can receive a revelation ; the 
individual also has to pass through his various stages of 
Pagan, Guebre, Moslem, Jew, Essene — God knows what all 
— before he can begin to see and understand the living 
Christ. The child has to pass through all the phases of 
lower animal life ; when change is arrested, he is born a 
monster ; and in many a Christian the rudiments of former 
stages are far from extinct — not seldom revive, and for the 
time seem to reabsorb the development, making indeed a 
monstrous show. 

“ For myself,” — I give a passage from Wingfold’s note- 
book, written for his wife’s reading — “ I feel sometimes as if 
I were yet a pagan, struggling hard to break through where 
I see a glimmer of something better, called Christianity. 
In any case what I have, can be but a foretaste of what I 
have yet to be ; and if so, then indeed is there a glory laid 


/ 


PAUL FABER. IO9 

up for them that will have God, the I of their /, to throne 
it in the temple he has built, to pervade the life he has 
lifed out of himself. My soul is now as a chaos with a hungry 
heart of order buried beneath its slime, that longs and longs 
for the moving of the breath of God over its water and 
mud.” 

The foundation-stone of the chapel was to be laid with 
a short and simple ceremony, at which no clergy but them- 
selves were to be present. The rector had not consented, 
and the curate had not urged, that it should remain uncon- 
secrated ; it was therefore uncertain, so far at least as 
Wingfold knew, whether it was to be chapel or lecture hall. 
In either case it was for the use and benefit of the villagers, 
and they were all invited to be present. A few of the 
neighbors who were friends of the rector and his wife, were 
also invited, and among them was Miss Meredith. 

Mr. and Mrs. Bevis had long ere now called upon her, 
and found her, as Mrs. Bevis said, fit for any society. She 
had lunched several times with them, and, her health being 
now greatly restored, was the readier to accept the present 
invitation, that she was growing again anxious about 
employment. 

Almost every one was taken with her sweet manner, 
shaded with sadness. At one time self-dissatisfaction had 
made her too anxious to please : in the mirror of other 
minds she sought a less unfavorable reflection of herself. 
But trouble had greatly modified this tendency, and taken 
the too-much out of her courtesy. 

She and Mrs. Puckridge went together, and Faber, call- 
ing soon after, found the door locked. He saw the gather- 
ing in the park, however, had heard something about the 
ceremony, concluded they were assisting, and, after a little 
questioning with himself, led his horse to the gate, made 
fast the reins to it, went in, and approached the little assem- 
bly. Ere he reached it, he saw them kneel, whereupon he 
made a circuit and got behind a tree, for he would not will- 
ingly seem rude, and he dared not be hypocritical. Thence 
he descried Juliet kneeling with the rest, and could not help 
being rather annoyed. Neither could he help being a little 
struck with the unusual kind of prayer the curate was mak- 
ing ; for he spoke as to the God of workmen, the God of 
invention and creation, who made the hearts of his creatures 
so like his own that they must build and make. 

When the observance was over, and the people were 


no 


PAUL FABER. 


scattering in groups, till they should be summoned to the 
repast prepared for them, the rector caught sight of the 
doctor, and went to him. 

“Ha, Faber ! ” he cried, holding out his hand, “this is 
kind of you ! I should hardly have expected you to be 
present on such an occasion ! ” 

“ I hoped my presence would not offend you,” answered 
the doctor. “I did not presume to come closer than just 
within earshot of your devotions. Neither must you think 
me unfriendly for keeping aloof.” 

“ Certainly not. I would not have you guilty of irrever- 
ence.” 

“ That could hardly be, if I recognized no presence.” 

“There was at least,” rejoined Mr. Bevis, “the presence 
of a good many of your neighbors, to whom you never fail 
to recognize your duty, and that is the second half of re- 
ligion : would it not have showed want of reverence toward 
them, to bring an unsympathetic presence into the midst of 
their devotion ? ” 

“ That I grant,” said the doctor. 

“ But it may be,” said the curate, who had come up while 
they talked, “ that what you, perhaps justifiably, refuse to 
recognize as irreverence, has its root in some fault of which 
you are not yet aware.” 

“ Then I’m not to blame for it,” said Faber quietly. 

“ But you might be terribly the loser by it.” 

“ That is, you mean, if there should be One to whom 
reverence is due ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“Would that be fair, then — in an All-wise, that is, toward 
an ignorant being ? ” 

“ I think not. Therefore I look for something to reveal 
it to you. But, although I dare not say you are to blame, 
because that would be to take upon myself the office of a 
judge, which is God’s alone. He only being able to give fair 
play, I would yet have you search yourself, and see whether 
you may not come upon something which keeps you from 
giving full and honest attention to what some people, as 
honest as yourself, think they see true. I am speaking only 
from my knowledge of myself, and the conviction that we 
are all much alike. What if you should discover that you 
do not really and absolutely disbelieve in a God ? — that the 
human nature is not capable of such a disbelief ? — that your 
unbelief has been only indifference and irreverence — and 


PAUL FABER. 


Ill 


that to a Being grander and nobler and fairer than numan 
heart can conceive ? ” 

If it be so, let Him punish me,” said the doctor gravely. 

If it be so. He will,” said the curate solemnly, “ — and 
you will thank Him for it — after a while. The God of my 
belief is too good not to make Himself known to a man who 
loves what is fair and honest, as you do.” 

The doctor was silent. 

While they were talking thus, two ladies had left the others 
and now approached them — Mrs. Wingfold and Miss Mer- 
edith. They had heard the last few sentences, and seeing 
two clergymen against one infidel, hastened with the gener- 
osity of women to render him what aid they might. 

“ I am sure Mr. Faber is honest,” said Helen. 

“ That is much to say for any man,” returned the curate. 

“If any man is, then,” adjected Juliet. 

“That is a great //,” rejoined Wingfold. “ — Are you 
honest, Helen ? ” he added, turning to his wife. 

“ No,” she answered ; “but I am honester than I was a 
year ago.” 

“ So am I,” said her husband ; “ and I hope to be 
honester yet before another is over. It’s a big thing to say, 
I am honest'' 

Juliet was silent, and Helen, who was much interested 
with her, turned to see how she was taking it. Her lips were 
as white as her face. Helen attributed the change to anger, 
and was silent also. The same moment the rector moved 
toward the place where the luncheon-tables were, and they 
all accompanied him, Helen still walking, in a little anxiety, 
by Juliet’s side. It was some minutes before the color came 
back to her lips ; but when Helen next addressed her, she 
answered as gently and sweetly as if the silence had been 
nothing but an ordinary one. 

“ You will stay and lunch with us, Mr. Faber ? ” said the 
rector. “ There can be no hypocrisy in that — eh ? ” 

“ Thank you,” returned the doctor heartily ; “ but my 
work is waiting me, and we all agree that must be done, 
whatever our opinions as to the ground, of the obligation.” 

“ And no man can say you don’t do, it,” rejoined the curate 
kindly. “ That’s one thing we do agree in, as you say : let 
us hold by it, Faber, and; keep as good friends ::s we can, 
till we grow better ones.” 

Faber could not quite match the curate in plain speaking : 
the pupil was not up with his master yet. 


II2 


PAUL FABER. 


Thank you, Wingfold,” he returned, and his voice was 
not free of emotion, though Juliet alone felt the tremble of 
the one vibrating thread in it. “ — Miss Meredith,” he went 
on, turning to her, “ I have heard of something that perhaps 
may suit you : will you allow me to call in the evening, and 
talk it over with you ? ” 

“Please do,” responded Juliet eagerly. “Come before 
post-time if you can. It may be necessary to write.” 

“ I will. Good morning.” 

He made a general bow to the company and walked away, 
cutting off the heads of the dandelions with his whip as he 
went. All followed with their eyes his firm, graceful figure, 
as he strode over the grass in his riding-boots and spurs. 

“ He's a fine fellow that ! ” said the rector. “ — But, bless 
me ! ” he added, turning to his curate, “ how things change ! 
If you had told me a year ago, the day would come when I 
should call an atheist a fine fellow, I should almost have 
thought you must be one yourself ! Yet here I am saying 
it — and never in my life so much in earnest to be a Christian ! 
How is it. Wingfold, my boy ? ” 

“ He who has the spirit of his Master, will speak the truth 
even of his Master’s enemies,” answered the curate. “ To 
this he is driven if he does not go willingly, for he knows 
his Master loves his enemies. If you see Faber a fine fel- 
low, you say so, just as the Lord would, and try the more to 
save him. A man who loves and serves his neighbor, let him 
speak ever so many words against the Son of Man, is not 
sinning against the Holy Ghost. He is still open to the 
sacred influence — the virtue which is ever going forth from 
God to heal. It is the man who in the name of religion 
opposes that which he sees to be good, who is in danger of 
eternal sin.” 

“ Come, come. Wingfold ! whatever you do, don’t mis- 
quote,” said the rector. 

“ I don’t say it is the right reading,” returned the curate, 

“ but I can hardly be convicted of misquoting, so long as it 
is that of the two oldest manuscripts we have.” 

“You always have the better of me,” answered the rector. 

“ But tell me — are not the atheists of the present day a bet- 
ter sort of fellows than those we used to hear of when we 
were young ? ” 

“ I do think so. But, as one who believes with his whole 
soul, and strives with his whole will, I attribute their better- 
ness to the growing influences of God upon the race through 


PAUL FABER. 


II3 

them that have believed. And I am certain of this, that, 
whatever they are, it needs but time and continued unbelief 
to bring them down to any level from whatever height. 
They will either repent, or fall back into the worst things, 
believing no more in their fellow-man and the duty they owe 
him — of which they now rightly make so much, and yet not 
half enough — than they do in God and His Christ. But I 
do not believe half the bad things Christians have said and 
written of atheists. Indeed I do not believe the greater 
number of those they have called such, were atheists at all. 
I suspect that worse dishonesty, and greater injustice, are to 
be found among the champions, lay and cleric, of religious 
opinion, than in any other class. If God were such a One 
as many of those who would fancy themselves His apostles, 
the universe would be but a huge hell. Look at certain of 
the so-called religious newspapers, for instance. Religious ! 
Their tongue is set on fire of hell. It may be said that they 
are mere money-speculations ; but what makes them pay ? 
Who buys them ? To please whom do they write ? Do not 
many buy them who are now and then themselves disgusted 
with them ? Why do they not refuse to touch the unclean 
things ? Instead of keeping the commandment, ‘ that 
he who loveth God love his brother also,’ these, the prime 
channels of Satanic influence in the Church, powerfully 
teach, that He that loveth God must abuse his brother — or 
he shall be himself abused.” 

“ I fancy,” said the rector, “ they would withhold the 
name of brother from those they abuse.” 

“ No ; not always.” 

“ They wouM from an unbeliever.” 

“ Yes. But let them then call him an enemy, and behave 
to him as such — that is, love him, or at least try to give 
him the fair play to which the most wicked of devils has the 
same right as the holiest of saints. It is the vile falsehood 
and miserable unreality of Christians, their faithlessness to 
their Master, their love of their own wretched sects, their 
worldliness and unchristianity, their talking and not doing, 
that has to answer, I suspect, for the greater part of our 
present atheism.” 

“ I have seen a good deal of Mr. Faber of late,” Juliet 
said, with a slight tremor in her voice, “ and he seems to me 
incapable of falling into those vile conditions I used to hear 
attributed to atheists.” 

“ The atheism of some men,” said the curate, is a 


PAUL FABER. 


II4 

nobler thing than the Christianity of some of the foremost 
of so-called and so-believed Christians, and I may not 
doubt they will fare better at the last.” 

The rector looked a little blank at this, but said nothing. 
He had so often found, upon reflection, that what seemed 
extravagance in his curate was yet the spirit of Scripture, 
that he had learned to suspend judgment. 

Miss Meredith’s face glowed with the pleasure of hearing 
justice rendered the man in whom she was so much inter- 
ested, and she looked the more beautiful. She went soon 
after luncheon was over, leaving a favorable impression 
behind her. Some of the ladies said she was much too 
fond of the doctor ; but the gentlemen admired her spirit in 
standing up for him. Some objected to her paleness ; 
others said it was not paleness, but fairness, for her eyes 
and hair were as dark as the night ; but all agreed, that 
whatever it was to be called, her complexion was peculiar — 
some for that very reason judging it the more admirable, 
and others the contrary. Some said she was too stately, 
and attributed her carriage to a pride to which, in her 
position, she had no right, they said. Others judged that 
she needed such a bearing the more for self-defense, espe- 
cially if she had come down in the world. Her dress, it was 
generally allowed, was a little too severe — some thought, 
in its defiance of the fashion, assuming. No one disputed 
that she had been accustomed to good society, and none 
could say that she had made the slightest intrusive move- 
ment toward their circle. Still, why was it that nobody 
knew any thing about her ? 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE RECTORY. 

The curate and his wife had a good deal of talk about 
Juliet as they drove home from Nestley. Much pleased 
with herself, they heard from their hostess what she had 
learned of her history, and were the more interested. They 
^.»ast find her a situation, they agreed, where she would 
feel at home ; and in the meantime would let her under- 


PAUL FABER. 


”5 


Stand that, if she took up her abode in Glaston, and were so 
inclined, the town was large enough to give a good hope of 
finding a few daily engagements. 

Before they left Nestley, Helen had said to Mrs. Bevis 
that she would like to ask Miss Meredith to visit them for 
a few days. 

“ No one knows much about her,” remarked Mrs. Bevis, 
feeling responsible. 

“ She can’t be poison,” returned Helen. And if she 
were, she couldn’t hurt us. That’s the good of being 
husband and wife : so long as you are of one mind, you can 
do almost any thing.” 

When Faber called upon Juliet in the evening, nothing 
passed between them concerning the situation at which he 
had hinted. When he entered she was seated as usual in 
the corner of the dingy little couch, under the small window 
looking into the garden, in the shadow. She did not rise, 
but held out her hand to him. He went hastily up to her, 
took the hand she offered, sat down beside her, and at once 
broke into a full declaration of his love — now voluble, now 
hesitating, now submissive, now persuasive, but humblest 
when most passionate. Whatever the man’s conceit, or his 
estimate of the thing he would have her accept, it was in all 
honesty and modesty that he offered her the surrender of 
the very citadel of his being — alas, too “ empty, swept, and 
garnished ! ” Juliet kept her head turned from him ; he 
felt the hand he held tremble, and every now and then 
make a faint struggle to escape from his ; but he could not 
see that her emotion was such as hardly to be accounted 
for either by pleasure at the hearing of welcome words, or 
sorrow that her reply must cause pain. He ceased at 
length, and with eyes of longing sought a glimpse of her 
face, and caught one. Its wild, waste expression frightened 
him. It was pallid like an old sunset, and her breath came 
and went stormily. Three times, in a growing agony of 
effort, her lips failed of speech. She gave a sudden 
despairing cast of her head sideways, her mouth opened a 
little as if with mere helplessness, she threw a pitiful glance 
in his face, burst into a tumult of sobs, and fell back on the 
couch. Not a tear came to her eyes, but such was her 
trouble that she did not even care to lift her hand to her face to 
hide the movements of its rebellious muscles. Faber, bewild- 
ered, but, from the habits of his profession, master of himself, 
instantly prepared her something, which she took obediently ; 


ii6 


PAUL FABER. 


and as soon as she was quieted a little, mounted and rode 
away : two things were clear — one, that she could not be 
indifferent to him ; the other, that, whatever the cause of 
her emotion, she would for the present be better without 
him. He was both too kind and too proud to persist in 
presenting himself. 

The next morning Helen drew up her ponies at Mrs. 
Puckridge’s door, and Wingfold got out and stood by their 
heads, while she went in to call on Miss Meredith. 

Juliet had passed a sleepless night, and greatly dreaded 
the next interview with Faber. Helen’s invitation, therefore, 
to pay them a few days’ visit, came to her like a redemption : 
in their house she would have protection both from Faber 
and from herself. Heartily, with tears in her eyes, she ac- 
cepted it ; and her cordial and grateful readiness placed her 
yet a step higher in the regard of her new friends. The ac- 
ceptance of a favor may be the conferring of a greater. 
Quickly, hurriedly, she put up “ her bag of needments,” and 
with a sad, sweet smile of gentle apology, took the curate’s 
place beside his wife, while he got into the seat behind. 

Juliet, having been of late so much confined to the house, 
could not keep back the tears called forth by the pleasure 
of the rapid motion through the air, the constant change of 
scene, and that sense of human story which haunts the mind 
in passing unknown houses and farms and villages. An old 
thatched barn works as directly on the social feeling as the 
ancient castle or venerable manor-seat ; many a simple house 
will move one’s heart like a poem ; many a cottage like a 
melody. When at last she caught sight of the great church- 
tower, she clapped her hands with delight. There was a 
place in which to wander and hide ! she thought — in which 
to find refuge and rest, and coolness and shadow ! Even for 
Faber’s own sake she would not believe that faith a mere 
folly which had built such a pile as that ! Surely there was 
some way of meeting the terrible things he said — if only she 
could find it ! 

“ Are you fastidious. Miss Meredith, or willing to do any 
thing that is honest ? ” the curate asked rather abruptly, lean- 
ing forward from the back seat. 

“ If ever I was fastidious,” she answered, “ I think I am 
pretty nearly cured. I should certainly like my work to be 
so far within my capacity as to be pleasant to me.” 

“ Then there is no fear,” answered the curate. The 
people who don’t get on, are those that pick and choose 


PAUL FABER. 


IT7 


upon false principles. They generally attempt what they are 
unfit for, and deserve their failures. — -Are you willing to teach 
little puds and little tongues ? ” 

“ Certainly.” 

“ Tell me what you are able to do ? ” 

“ I would rather not. You might think differently when 
you came to know me. But you can ask me any questions 
you please. I shan’t hide my knowledge, and I can’t hide 
my ignorance.” 

“ Thank you,” said the curate, and leaned back again in 
his seat. 

After luncheon, Helen found to her delight that, although 
Juliet was deficient enough in the mechanics belonging to 
both voice and instrument, she could yet sing and play with 
expression and facility, while her voice was one of the loveli- 
est she had ever heard. When the curate came home from 
his afternoon attentions to the ailing of his flock, he was de- 
lighted to hear his wife’s report of her gifts. 

“ Would you mind reading a page or two aloud ? ” he said 
to their visitor, after they had had a cup of tea. “ I often 
get my wife to read to me.” 

She consented at once. He put a volume of Carlyle into 
her hand. She had never even tasted a book of his before, 
yet presently caught the spirit of the passage, and read 
charmingly. 

In the course of a day or two they discovered that she was 
sadly defective in spelling, a paltry poverty no doubt, yet 
awkward for one who would teach children. In grammar 
and arithmetic also the curate found her lacking.' Going from 
place to place with her father, she had never been much at 
school, she said, and no one had ever compelled her to at- 
tend to the dry things. But nothing could be more satis- 
factory than the way in which she now, with the help of the 
curate and his wife, set herself to learn ; and until she should 
have gained such proficiency as would enable them to speak 
of her acquirements with confidence, they persuaded her, 
with no great difficulty, to continue their guest. Wingfold, 
who had been a tutor in his day, was well qualified to assist 
her, and she learned with wonderful rapidity. 

The point that most perplexed Wingiold with her was that, 
while very capable of perceiving and admiring the good, she 
was yet capable of admiring things of altogether inferior 
quality. What did it mean ? Could it arise from an excess 
of productive faculty, not yet sufficiently differenced from 


ii8 


PAUL FABER. 


the receptive ? One could imagine such an excess ready to 
seize the poorest molds, flow into them, and endow them 
for itself with attributed life and power. He found also that 
she was familiar with the modes of thought and expression 
peculiar to a certain school of theology — embodiments from 
which, having done their good, and long commenced doing 
their evil. Truth had begun to withdraw itself, consuming as 
it withdrew. For the moment the fire ceases to be the life 
of the bush in which it appears, the bush will begin to be 
consumed. At the same time he could perfectly recognize 
the influence of Faber upon her. For not unfrequently, the 
talk between the curate and his wife would turn upon some 
point connected with the unbelief of the land, so much more 
active, though but seemingly more extensive than heretofore ; 
when she would now make a remark, now ask a question, in 
which the curate heard the doctor as plainly as if the words 
had come direct from his lips : those who did not believe 
might answer so and so — might refuse the evidence — might 
explain the thing differently. But she listened well, and 
seemed to understand what they said. The best of her un- 
doubtedly appeared in her music, in which she was funda- 
mentally far superior to Helen, though by no means so well 
trained, taught or practiced in it ; whence Helen had the un- 
speakable delight, one which only a humble, large and lofty 
mind can ever have, of consciously ministering to the growth 
of another in the very thing wherein that other is naturally 
the superior. The way to the blessedness that is in music, 
as to all other blessednesses, lies through weary labors, and 
the master must suffer with the disciple ; Helen took Juliet 
like a child, set her to scales and exercises, and made her 
practice hours a day. 


CHAPTER XX. 

AT THE PIANO. 

When Faber called on Juliet, the morning after the last 
interview recorded, and found where she was gone, he did 
not doubt she had taken refuge with her new friends from 
his importunity, and was at once confirmed in the idea he 


PAUL FABER. 


II9 

had cherished through the whole wakeful night, that the 
cause of her agitation was nothing else than the conflict 
between her heart and a false sense of duty, born of preju- 
dice and superstition. She was not willing to send him 
away, and yet she dared not accept him. Her behavior had 
certainly revealed any thing but indifference, and therefore 
must not make him miserable. At the same time if it was 
her pleasure to avoid him, what chance had he of seeing her 
alone at the rectory ? The thought made him so savage that 
for a moment he almost imagined his friend had been play- 
ing him false. 

“ I suppose he thinks every thing fair in religion, as well 
as in love and war ! ” he said to himself. “ It’s a mighty 
stake, no doubt — a soul like Juliet’s ! ” 

He laughed scornfully. It was but a momentary yielding 
to the temptation of injustice, however, for his conscience 
told him at once that the curate was incapable of any thing 
either overbearing or underhand. He would call on her as 
his patient, and satisfy himself at once how things were 
between them. At best they had taken a bad turn. 

He judged it better, however, to let a day or two pass. 
When he did call, he was shown into the drawing-room., 
where he found Helen at the piano, and Juliet having a 
singing-lesson from her. Till then he had never heard 
Juliet’s song voice. A few notes of it dimly reached him 
as he approached the room, and perhaps prepared him for 
the impression he was about to receive : when the door 
opened, like a wind on a more mobile sea, it raised sudden 
tumult in his soul. Not once in his life had he ever been 
agitated in such fashion ; he knew himself as he had never 
known himself. It was as if some potent element, 
undreamed of before, came rushing into th ^ ordered sphere 
of his world, and shouldered its elements from the rhythm 
of their going. It was a full contralto, with pathos in the 
very heart of it, and it seemed to wrap itself round his heart 
like a serpent of saddest splendor^ and press the blood 
from it up into his eyes. The ladies v/ere too much occupied 
to hear him announced, or note his entrance, as he stood by 
the door, absorbed, entranced. 

Presently he began to feel annoyed, and proceeded there- 
upon to take precautions with himself. For Juliet was hav- 
ing a lesson of the severest kind, in which she accepted 
every lightest hint with the most heedful attention, and coiy 
formed thereto with the sweetest obedience ; whence it 


120 


PAUL FABER. 


came that Faber, the next moment after fancying he had 
screwed his temper to stoic pitch, found himself passing 
from displeasure to indignation, and thence almost to fury, 
as again and again some exquisite tone, that went thrilling 
through all his being, discovering to him depths and recesses 
hitherto unimagined, was unceremoniously, or with briefest 
apology, cut short for the sake of some suggestion from 
Helen. Whether such suggestion was right or wrong, was 
to Faber not of the smallest consequence : it was in itself a 
sacrilege, a breaking into the house of life, a causing of that 
to cease whose very being was its justification. Mrs. Wing- 
fold ! she was not fit to sing in the same chorus with her ! 
Juliet was altogether out of sight of her. He had heard 
Mrs. Wingfold sing many a time, and she could no more 
bring out a note like one of those she was daring to 
criticise, than a cat could emulate a thrush ! 

“ Ah, Mr. Faber ! — I did not know you were there," said 
Helen at length, and rose. “ We were so busy we never 
heard you.” 

If she had looked at Juliet, she would have said /instead 
of we. Her kind manner brought Faber to himself a little. 

“ Pray, do not apologize,” he said. “ I could have listened 
forever.” 

“ I don’t wonder. It is not often one hears notes like 
those. Were you aware what a voice you had saved to the 
world ? ” 

“ Not in the least. Miss Meredith leaves her gifts to be 
discovered.” 

“ All good things wait the seeker,” said Helen, who had 
taken to preaching since she married the curate, some of 
her half-friends said ; the fact being that life had grown to 
her so gracious, so happy, so serious, that she would not 
unfrequently say a thing worth saying. 

In the interstices of this little talk, Juliet and Faber had 
shaken hands, and murmured a conventional word or two. 

“ I suppose this is a professional visit ? ” said Helen. 
“ Shall I leave you with your patient ? ” 

As she put the question, however, she turned to Juliet. 

“ There is not the least occasion,” Juliet replied, a little 
eagerly, and with a rather wan smile. “ I am quite well, 
and have dismissed my doctor.” 

Faber was in the mood to imagine more than met the ear, 
and the words seemed to him of cruel significance. A flush 
of anger rose to his forehead, and battled with the paleness 


PAUL FABER. 


I2I 


of chagrin. He said nothing. But Juliet saw and under- 
stood. Instantly she held out her hand to him again, and 
supplemented the offending speech with the words, 

“ — but, I hope, retained my friend ? ” 

The light rushed again into Faber's eyes, and Juliet 
repented afresh, for the words had wrought too far in the 
other direction. 

“ That is,” she amended, “ if Mr. Faber will condescend 
to friendship, after having played the tyrant so long.” 

“ I can only aspire to it,” said the doctor. 

It sounded mere common compliment, the silliest thing 
between man and woman, and Mrs. Wingfold divined noth- 
ing more : she was not quick in such matters. Had she 
suspected, she might, not knowing the mind of the lady^ 
have been a little perplexed. As it was, she did not leave 
the room, and presently the curate entered, with a news- 
paper in his hand. 

“ They’re still at it, Faber,” he said, “ with their heated 
liquids and animal life ! ” 

“ I need not ask which side you take,” said the doctor, 
not much inclined to enter upon any discussion. 

I take neither,” answered the curate. “ Where is the 
use, or indeed possibility, so long as the men of science them- 
selves are disputing about the facts of experiment ? It will 
be time enough to try to understand them, when they are 
agreed and we know what the facts really are. Whatever 
they may turn out to be, it is but a truism to say they must 
be consistent with all other truth, although they may entirely 
upset some of our notions of it.” 

“To which side then do you lean, as to the weight of the 
evidence ? ” asked Faber, rather listlessly. 

He had been making some experiments of his own in the 
direction referred to. They were not so complete as he 
would have liked, for he found a large country practice 
unfriendly to investigation ; but, such as they were, they 
favored the conclusion that no form of life appeared where 
protection from the air was thorough. 

“ I take the evidence,” answered the curate, “ to be in 
favor of what they so absurdly call spontaneous genera- 
tion.” 

“ I am surprised to hear you say so,” returned Faber. 
“ The conclusions necessary thereupon, are opposed to all 
your theology.” 

“ Must I then, because I believe in a living Truth, be 


122 


PAUL FABER. 


myself an unjust judge ? ” said the curate. But indeed 
the conclusions are opposed to no theology I have any 
acquaintance with ; and if they were, it would give me no 
concern. Theology is not my origin, but God. Nor do I 
acknowledge any theology but what Christ has taught, and 
has to teach me. When, and under what circumstances, 
life comes first into human ken, can not affect His lessons of 
trust and fairness. If I were to play tricks with the truth, 
shirk an argument, refuse to look a fact in the face, I should 
be ashamed to look Him in the face. What he requires of 
his friends is pure, open-eyed truth.” 

“ But how,” said the doctor, “ can you grant spontaneous 
generation, and believe in a Creator ? ” 

“ I said the term was an absurd one,” rejoined the curate. 
“ Never mind the term then : you admit the fact ? ” said 
Faber. 

What fact ? ” asked Wingfold. 

“ That in a certain liquid, where all life has been de- 
stroyed, and where no contact with life is admitted, life of 
itself appears,” defined the doctor. 

“ No, no ; I admit nothing of the sort,” cried Wingfold. 
I only admit that the evidence seems in favor of believ- 
ing that in some liquids that have been heated to a high 
point, and kept from the air, life has yet appeared. How 
can I tell whether all life already there was first destroyed ? 
whether a yet higher temperature would not have destroyed 
yet more life ? What if the heat, presumed to destroy all 
known germs of life in them, should be the means of de- 
veloping other germs, further removed ? Then as to spo7i~ 
taneity^ as to life appearing of itself, that question involves 
something beyond physics. Absolute life can exist only of 
and by itself, else were it no perfect thing ; but will you 
say that a mass of protoplasm — that proto by the way is a 
begged question — exists by its own power, appears by its 
own will ? Is it not rather there because it can not help it ? ” 
“ It is there in virtue of the life that is in it,” said Faber. 
“ Of course ; that is a mere truism,” returned Wingfold, 
equivalent to. It lives in virtue of life. There is nothing 
spontaneous in that. Its life must in some way spring from 
the true, the original, the self-existent life.” 

“ There you are begging the whole question,” objected 
the doctor. 

“ No ; not the whole,” persisted the curate ; “ for I fancy 
you will yourself admit there is some blind driving law be- 


PAUL FABER. 


123 


hind the phenomenon. But now I will beg the whole ques- 
tion, if you like to say so, for the sake of a bit of purely 
metaphysical argument : the law of life behind, if it be 
spontaneously existent, can not be a blind, deaf, uncon- 
scious law ; if it be unconscious of itself, it can not be 
spontaneous ; whatever is of itself must be God, and the 
source of all non-spontaneous, that is, all other existence.” 

“ Then it has been only a dispute about a word ? ” said 
Faber. 

“ Yes, but a word involving a tremendous question,” 
answered Wingfold. 

“ Which I give up altogether,” said the doctor, “ assert- 
ing that there is nothing spontaneous, in the sense you give 
the word — the original sense I admit. From all etern- 
ity a blind, unconscious law has been at work, producing.” 

“ I say, an awful living Love and Truth and Right, creat- 
ing children of its own,” said the curate — “ and there is 
our difference.” 

“ Yes,” assented Faber. 

“ Anyhow, then,” said Wingfold, “ so far as regards the 
matter in hand, all we can say is, that under such and such 
circumstances life appears — whence^ we believe differently ; 
how^ neither of us can tell — perhaps will ever be able to tell. 
I can’t talk in scientific phrase like you, Faber, but truth 
is not tied to any form of words.” 

‘‘ It is well disputed,” said the doctor, “ and I am 
inclined to grant that the question with which we started 
does not immediately concern the great differences 
between us.” 

It was rather hard upon Faber to have to argue when out 
of condition and with a lady beside to whom he was long- 
ing to pour out his soul— his antagonist a man who never 
counted a sufficing victory gained, unless his adversary had 
had light and wind both in his back. Trifling as was the 
occasion of the present skirmish, he had taken his stand 
on the lower ground. Faber imagined he read both triumph 
and pity in Juliet’s regard, and could scarcely endure his 
position a moment longer. 

“ Shall we have some music ? ” said Wingfold. “ — I see 
the piano open. Or are you one of those worshipers of 
work, who put music in the morning in the same category 
with looking on the wine when it is red ? ” 

“ Theoretically, no ; but practically, yes,” answered 
Faber, “ — at least for to-day. I shouldn’t like poor Widow 


124 


PAUL FABER. 


Mullens to lie listening to the sound of that old water-wheel, 
till it took up its parable against the faithlessness of men in 
general, and the doctor in particular. I can’t do her much 
good, poor old soul, but I can at least make her fancy her- 
self of consequence enough not to be forgotten.” 

The curate frowned a little — thoughtfully — but said noth- 
ing, and followed his visitor to the door. When he returned, 
he said, 

“ I wonder what it is in that man that won’t let him 
believe ! ” 

Perhaps he will yet, some day,” said Juliet, softly. 

“ He will ; he must,” answered the curate. “ He always 
reminds me of the young man who had kept the law, and 
whom our Lord loved. Surely he must have been one of 
the first that came and laid his wealth at the apostles’ feet ! 
May not even that half of the law which Faber tries to keep, 
be school-master enough to lead him to Christ ? — But come. 
Miss Meredith ; now for our mathematics ! ” 

Every two or three days the doctor called to see his late 
patient. She wanted looking after, he said. But not once 
did he see her alone. He could not tell from their behav- 
ior whether she or her hostess was to blame for his recur- 
ring disappointment ; but the fact was, that his ring at the 
door-bell was the signal to Juliet not to be alone. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

THE pastor’s study. 

Happening at length to hear that visitors were expected, 
Juliet, notwithstanding the assurances of her hostess that 
there was plenty of room for her, insisted on finding lodg- 
ings, and taking more direct measures for obtaining employ- 
ment. But the curate had not been idle in her affairs, and 
had already arranged for her with some of his own people 
who had small children, only he had meant she should not 
begin just yet. He wanted her both to be a little stronger, 
and to have got a little further with one or two of her studies. 
And now, consulting with Helen, he broached a new idea on 
the matter of her lodgment. 


PAUL FABER. 


125 


A day or two before Jones, the butcher, had been talking 
to him about Mr. Drake — saying how badly his congregation 
had behaved to him, and in what trouble he had come to 
him, because he could not pay his bill. The good fellow 
had all this time never mentioned the matter ; and it was 
from growing concern about the minister that he now spoke 
of it to the curate. 

“We don’t know all the circumstances, however, Mr. 
Jones,” the curate replied ; “and perhaps Mr. Drake him- 
self does not think so badly of it as you do. He is a most 
worthy man. Mind you let him have whatever he wants. 
I’ll see to you. Don’t mention it to a soul.” 

“ Bless your heart and liver, sir ! ” exclaimed the butcher, 
“ he’s ten times too much of a gentleman to do a kindness 
to. I couldn’t take no liberty with that man — no, not if he 
was ’most dead of hunger. He’d eat the rats out of his 
own cellar, I do believe, before he’d accept what you may 
call a charity ; and for buying when he knows he can’t 
pay, why he’d beg outright before he’d do that. What he 
do live on now I can’t nohow make out — and that’s what 
doos make me angry with him — as if a honest tradesman 
didn’t know how to behave to a gentleman ! Why, they tell 
me, sir, he did use to drive his carriage and pair in London ! 
And now he’s a doin’ of his best to live on nothink at all ! 
— leastways, so they tell me — seein’ as how he’d have ’em 
believe he was turned a — what’s it they call it ! — a — a — a 
wegetablarian ! — that’s what he do, sir ! But I know better. 
He may be eatin’ grass like a ox, as did that same old king 
o’ Israel as growed the feathers and claws in consequence ; 
and I don’t say he ain’t ; but one thing I’m sure of, and that 
is, that if he be, it’s by cause he can’t help it. Why, sir, I 
put it to you — no gentleman wOuld — if he could help it. — 
Why don’t he come to me for a bit o’ wholesome meat ? ” he 
went on in a sorely injured tone. “ He knows I’m ready for 
anythink in reason ! Them peas an’ beans an' cabbages an’ 
porridges an’ carrots an’ turmits — why, sir, they ain’t 
nothink at all but water an’ wind. I don’t say as they 
mayn’t keep a body alive for a year or two, but, bless you, 
there s nothink in them ; and the man’ll be a skelinton long 
before he’s dead an’ buried ; an’ I shed jest like to know 
where’s the good o’ life on sich terms as them ! ” 

Thus Jones, the butcher — a man who never sold bad meat, 
never charged for an ounce more than he delivered, and 
when he sold to the poor, considered them. In buying and 


126 


PAUL FABER. 


selling he had a weakness for giving the fair play he de- 
manded. He had a little spare money somewhere, but he 
did not make a fortune out of hunger, retire early, and build 
churches. A local preacher once asked him if he knew 
what was the plan of salvation. He answered with the 
utmost innocence, cutting him off a great lump of leg of 
beef for a family he had just told him was starving, that he 
hadn’t an idea, but no Christian could doubt it was all right. 

The curate, then, pondering over what Mr. Jones had told 
him, had an idea ; and now he and his wife were speedily of 
one mind as to attempting an arrangement for Juliet with 
Miss Drake. What she would be able to pay would, they 
thought, ease them a little, while she would have the advant- 
age of a better protection than a lodging with more humble 
people would afford her. Juliet was willing for any thing 
they thought best. 

Wingfold therefore called on the minister, to make the 
proposal to him, and was shown up to his study — a mere 
box, where there was just room for a chair on each side of 
the little writing-table. The walls from top to bottom were 
entirely hidden with books. 

Mr. Drake received him with a touching mixture of sad- 
ness and cordiality, and heard in silence what he had to say. 

‘‘ It is very kind of you to think of us, Mr. Wingfold,” he 
replied, after a moment’s pause. “ But 1 fear the thing is 
impossible. Indeed, it is out of the question. Circum- 
stances are changed with us. Things are not as they once 
were.” 

There had always been a certain negative virtue in Mr. 
Drake, which only his friends were able to see, and only the 
wisest of them to set over against his display — this, namely, 
that he never attempted to gain credit for what he knew he 
had not. As he was not above show, I can not say he was 
safely above false show, for he who is capable of the one is 
still in danger of the other ; but he was altogether above 
deception : that he scorned. If, in his time of plenty he 
liked men to be aware of his worldly facilities, he now, in 
the time of his poverty, preferred that men should be aware 
of the bonds in which he lived. His nature was simple, and 
loved to let in the daylight. Concealment was altogether 
alien to him. From morning to night anxious, he could not 
bear to be supposed of easy heart. Some men think poverty 
such a shame that they would rather be judged absolutely 
mean than confess it. Mr. Drake’s openness may have 


PAUL FABER. 


127 


sprung from too great a desire for sympathy, or from a 
diseased honesty — I can not tell ; I will freely allow that if 
his faith had been as a grain of mustard seed, he would not 
have been so haunted with a sense of his poverty, as to be 
morbidly anxious to confess it. He would have known that 
his affairs were in high charge : and that, in the full flow 
of the fountain of prosperity, as well as in the scanty, 
gravelly driblets from the hard-wrought pump of poverty, the 
supply came all the same from under the throne of God, 
and he would not have felt poor. A man ought never to 
feel rich for riches, nor poor for poverty. The perfect man 
must always feel rich, because God is rich. 

“ The fact is,” Mr. Drake went on, “ we are very poor — 
absolutely poor, Mr. Wingfold — so poor that I may not even 
refuse the trifling annuity my late congregation will dole 
out to me.” 

“ I am sorry to know it,” said the curate. 

“ But I must take heed of injustice,” the pastor resumed ; 
“ I do not think they would have treated me so had they 
not imagined me possessed of private means. The pity now 
is that the necessity which would make me glad to fall in 
with your kind proposal itself renders the thing impracti- 
cable. Even with what your friend would contribute to the 
housekeeping we could not provide a table fit for her. But 
Dorothy ought to have the pleasure of hearing your kind 
proposition : if you will allow me I will call her.” 

Dorothy was in the kitchen, making pastry — for the rare 
treat of a chicken pudding : they had had a present of a 
couple of chickens from Mrs. Thomson — when she heard 
her father’s voice calling her from the top of the little stair. 
When Lisbeth opened the door to the curate she was on her 
way out, and had not yet returned ; so she did not know 
any one was with him, and hurried up with her arms bare. 

She recoiled half a step when she saw Mr. Wingfold, 
then went frankly forward to welcome him, her hands in 
her white pinafore. 

“ It’s only flour,” she said, smiling. 

“ It is a rare pleasure now-a-days to catch a lady at work ” 
said Wingfold. “ My wife always dusts my study for me. 
I told her I would not have it done except she did it — just 
to have the pleasure of seeing her at it. My conviction is, 
that only a lady can become a thorough servant.” 

“ Why don’t you have lady-helps then ? ” said Dorothy. 

“ Because I don’t know where to find them. Ladies are 


128 


PAUL FABER. 


scarce ; and any thing almost would be better than a house- 
ful of half-ladies.” 

I think I understand,” said Dorothy thoughtfully. 

Her father now stated Mr. Wingfold’s proposal — in the 
tone of one sorry to be unable to entertain it. 

“ I see perfectly why you think we could not manage it, 
papa,” said Dorothy. “ But why should not Miss Meredith 
lodge with us in the same way as with Mrs. Puckridge ? 
She could have the drawing-room and my bedroom, and 
her meals by herself. Lisbeth is wretched for want of 
dinners to cook.” 

“ Miss Meredith would hardly relish the idea of turning 
you out of your drawing-room,” said Wingfold. 

“ Tell her it may save us from being turned out of the 
house. Tell her she will be a great help to us,” returned 
Dorothy eagerly. 

My child,” said her father, the tears standing in his 
eyes, “ your reproach sinks into my very soul.” 

“ My reproach, father ! ” repeated Dorothy aghast. 
“ How you do mistake me ! I can’t say with you that the 
will of God is every thing ; but I can say that far less 
than your will — ^your ability — will always be enough for 
me.” 

“ My child,” returned her father, “ you go on to rebuke 
me ! You are immeasurably truer to me than I am to my 
God. — Mr. Wingfold, you love the Lord, else I would not 
confess my sin to you : of late I have often thought, or at 
least felt as if He was dealing hardly with me. Ah, my 
dear sir ! you are a young man : for the peace of your soul 
serve God so, that, by the time you are my age, you may 
be sure of Him. I try hard to put my trust in Him, but my 
faith is weak. It ought by this time to have been strong. 
I always want to see the way He is leading me — to under- 
stand something of what He is doing with me or teaching 
me, before I can accept His will, or get my heart to consent 
not to complain. It makes me very unhappy. I begin to 
fear that I have never known even the beginning of confi- 
dence, and that faith has been with me but a thing of the 
understanding and the lips.” 

He bowed his head on his hands. Dorothy went up to 
him and laid a hand on his shoulder, looking unspeakably 
sad. A sudden impulse moved the curate. 

“ Let us pray,” he said, rising, and kneeled down. 

It was a strange, unlikely thing to do ; but he was an 


PAUL FABER. I29 

unlikely man, and did it. The others made haste to kneel 
also. 

“ God of justice,” he said, “ Thou knowest how hard it is 
for us, and Thou wilt be fair to us. We have seen no 
visions ; we have never heard the voice of Thy Son, of 
whom those tales, so dear to us, have come down the ages ; 
we have to fight on in much darkness of spirit and of mind, 
both from the ignorance we can not help, and from the 
fault we could have helped ; we inherit blindness from the 
error of our fathers ; and when fear, or the dread of shame, 
or the pains of death, come upon us, we are ready to des- 
pair, and cry out that there is no God, or, if there be. He 
has forgotten His children. There are times when the dark- 
ness closes about us like a wail, and Thou appearest no- 
where, either in our hearts, or in the outer universe ; we 
can not tell whether the things we seemed to do in Thy 
name, were not mere hypocrisies, and our very life is but a 
gulf of darkness. We cry aloud, and our despair is as a 
fire in our bones to make us cry ; but to all our crying and 
listening, there seems neither hearing nor answer in the 
boundless waste. Thou who knowest Thyself God, who 
knowest Thyself that for which we groan. Thou whom Jesus 
called Father, we appeal to Thee, not as we imagine Thee, 
but as Thou seest Thyself, as Jesus knows Thee, to Thy 
very self we cry — help us, O Cause of us ! O Thou from 
whom alone we are this weakness, through whom alone we 
can become strength, help us — be our Father. We ask for 
nothing beyond what Thy Son has told us to ask. We beg 
for no signs or wonders, but for Thy breath upon our souls. 
Thy spirit in our hearts. We pray for no cloven tongues of 
fire — for no mighty rousing of brain or imagination ; but 
we do, with all our power of prayer, pray for Thy spirit ; 
we do not even pray to know that it is given to us ; let us, 
if so it pleases Thee, remain in doubt of the gift for years 
to come — but lead us thereby. Knowing ourselves only as 
poor and feeble, aware only of ordinary and common move- 
ments of mind and soul, may we yet be possessed by the 
spirit of God, led by Flis will in ours. For all things in a 
man, even those that seem to him the commonest and least 
uplifted, are the creation of Thy heart, and by the lowly 
doors of our wavering judgment, dull imagination, luke- 
warm love, and palsied will. Thou canst enter and glorify 
all. Give us patience because our hope is in Thee, not in 
ourselves. Work Thy will in us, and our prayers are ended. 
Amen.” 


130 


PAUL FABER. 


They rose. The curate said he would call again in the 
evening, bade them good-by, and went. Mr. Drake turned 
to his daughter and said — 

“ Dorothy, that’s not the way I have been used to pray 
or hear people pray ; nevertheless the young man seemed 
to speak very straight up to God. It appears to me there 
was another spirit there with his. I will humble myself 
before the Lord. Who knows but he may lift me up ! ” 

“ What can my father mean by saying that perhaps God 
will lift him up ? ” said Dorothy to herself when she was 
alone. “ It seems to me if I only knew God was anywhere, 
I should want no other lifting up. I should then be lifted 
up above every thing forever.” 

Had she said so to the curate, he would have told her 
that the only way to be absolutely certain of God, is to see 
Him as He is, and for that we must first become absolutely 
pure in heart. For this He is working in us, and perfection 
and vision will flash together. Were conviction possible 
without that purity and that vision, I imagine it would work 
evil in us, fix in their imperfection our ideas, notions, feel- 
ings, concerning God, give us for His glory the warped 
reflection of our cracked and spotted and rippled glass, and 
so turn our worship into an idolatry. 

Dorothy was a rather little woman, with lightish auburn 
hair, a large and somewhat heavy forehead, fine gray eyes, 
small well-fashioned features, a fair complexion on a thin 
skin, and a mouth that would have been better in shape if it 
had not so often been informed of trouble. With this trouble 
their poverty had nothing to do ; that did not weigh upon 
her a straw. She was proud to share her father’s lot, and 
could have lived on as little as any laboring woman with 
seven children. She was indeed a trifle happier since her 
father’s displacement, and would have been happier still had 
he found it within the barest possibility to decline the annuity 
allotted him ; for, as far back as she could remember, she had 
been aware of a dislike to his position — partly from pride it 
may be, but partly also from a sense of the imperfection of 
the relation between him and his people — one in which love 
must be altogether predominant, else is it hateful — and 
chiefly because of a certain sordid element in the community 
— a vile way of looking at sacred things through the spec- 
tacles of mammon, more evident — I only say more evident 
— in dissenting than in Church of England communities, 
because of the pressure of expenses upon them. Perhaps 


PAUL FABER. 


I3I 

the impossibility of regarding her father’s church with rev- 
erence, laid her mind more open to the cause of her trouble 
— such doubts, namely, as an active intellect, nourished on 
some of the best books, and disgusted with the weak fervor 
of others rated high in her hearing, had been suggesting for 
years before any words of Faber’s reached her. The more 
her devout nature longed to worship, the more she found it 
impossible to worship that which was presented for her love 
and adoration. See believed entirely in her father, but she 
knew he could not meet her doubts, for many things made 
it plain that he had never had such himself. An ordinary 
mind that has had doubts, and has encountered and over- 
come them, or verified and found them the porters of the 
gates of truth, may be profoundly useful to any mind simi- 
larly assailed ; but no knowledge of books, no amount of 
logic, no degree of acquaintance with the wisest conclusions 
of others, can enable a man who has not encountered skep- 
ticism in his own mind, to afford any essential help to those 
caught in the net. For one thing, such a man will be inca- 
pable of conceiving the possibility that the net may be the 
net of The Fisher of Men. 

Dorothy, therefore, was sorely oppressed. For a long 
time her life had seemed withering from her, and now that 
her father was fainting on the steep path, and she had no 
water to offer him, she was ready to cry aloud in bitterness 
of spirit. 

She had never heard the curate preach — had heard talk 
of his oddity on all sides, from men and women no more 
capable of judging him than the caterpillar of judging the 
butterfly — which yet it must become. The draper, who 
understood him, naturally shrunk from praising to her 
the teaching for which he not unfrequently deserted that of 
her father, and she never looked in the direction of him with 
any hope. Yet now, the very first time she had heard him 
speak out of the abundance of his heart, he had left behind 
him a faint brown ray of hope in hers. It was very peculiar 
of him to break out in prayer after such an abrupt fashion 
— in the presence of an older minister than himself — and 
praying for him too ! But there was such an appearance of 
reality about the man ! such a simplicity in his look ! such 
a diiectness in his petitions ! such an active fervor of hope 
in his tone — without an atom of what she had heard called 
unction ! His thought and speech appeared to arise from 
no separated sacred mood that might be assumed and laid 


132 


PAUL FABER. 


aside, but from present faith and feeling, from the abso- 
lute point of life at that moment being lived by him. It 
was an immediate appeal to a hearing, and understanding, 
and caring God, whose breath was the very air His creat- 
ures breathed, the element of their life ; an utter acknowl- 
edgment of His will as the bliss of His sons and daugh- 
ters ! Such was the shining of the curate’s light, and it 
awoke hope in Dorothy. 

In the evening he came again as he had said, and brought 
Juliet. Each in the other, Dorothy and she recognized 
suffering, and in a very few moments every thing was 
arranged between them. Juliet was charmed with the sim- 
plicity and intentness of Dorothy ; in Juliet’s manner and 
carriage, Dorothy at once recognized a breeding superior to 
her own, and at once laid hold of the excellence by acknowl- 
edging it. In a moment she made Juliet understand how 
things were, and Juliet saw as quickly that she must assent 
to the arrangement proposed. But she had not been with 
them two days, when Dorothy found the drawing-room as 
open to her as before she came, and far more pleasant. 

While the girls were talking below, the two clergymen sat 
again in the study. 

“ I have taken the liberty,” said the curate, “ of bringing 
an old book I should like you to look at, if you don’t mind 
— chiefly for the sake of some verses that pleased me much 
when I read them first, and now please me more when I 
read them for the tenth time. If you will allow me, I will 
read them to you.” 

Mr. Drake liked good poetry, but did not much relish 
being called upon to admire, as he imagined he was now. 
He assented, of course, graciously enough, and soon found 
his mistake. 

This is the poem Wingfold read : 

CONSIDER THE RAVENS. 

Lord, according to Thy words, 

I have considered Thy birds ; 

And I find their life good, 

And better the better understood ; 

Sowing neither corn nor wheat. 

They have all that they can eat ; 

Reaping no more than they sow, 

They have all they can stow ; 

Having neither barn nor store, 

Hungry again, they eat more. 


PAUL FABER. 


133 


Considering I see too that they 
Have a busy life, and plenty of play ; 

In the earth they dig their bills deep, 

And work well though they do not heap ; 

Then to play in the air they are not loth. 

And their nests between are better than both. 

But this is when there blow no storms ; 

When berries are plenty in winter, and worms ; 

When their feathers are thick, and oil is enough 
To keep the cold out and the rain off : 

If there should come a long hard frost, 

Then it looks as Thy birds were lost. 

But I consider further, and find 
A hungry bird has a free mind ; 

He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow ; 

Steals no comfort, no grief doth borrow ; 

This moment is his, Thy will hath said it. 

The next is nothing till Thou hast made it. 

The bird has pain, but has no fear, 

Which is the worst of any gear ; 

When cold and hunger and harm betide him, 

He gathers them not to stuff inside him ; 

Content with the day’s ill he has got. 

He waits just, nor haggles with his lot ; 

Neither jumbles God’s will 
With driblets from his own still. 

But next I see, in my endeavor, 

Thy birds here do not live forever ; 

That cold or hunger, sickness or age, 

Finishes their earthly stage ; 

The rook drops without a stroke. 

And never gives another croak ; 

Birds lie here, and birds lie there. 

With little feathers all astare ; 

And in Thy own sermon. Thou 
That the sparrow falls dost allow. 

It shall not cause me any alarm. 

For neither so comes the bird to harm, 

Seeing our Father, Thou hast said. 

Is by the sparrow’s dying bed ; 

Therefore it is a blessed place. 

And the sparrow in high grace. 

It cometh therefore to this. Lord ; 

I have considered Thy word. 

And henceforth will be Thy bird. 

By the time Wingfold ceased, the tears were running 


134 


PAUL FABER. 


down the old man’s face. When he saw that, the curate 
rose at once, laid the book on the table, shook hands with 
him, and went away. The minister laid his head on the 
table, and wept. 

Juliet had soon almost as much teaching as she could 
manage. People liked her, and children came to love her 
a little. A good report of her spread. The work was hard, 
chiefly because it included more walking than she had been 
accustomed to ; but Dorothy generally walked with her, and 
to the places furthest off, Helen frequently took her with 
her ponies, and she got through the day’s work pretty well. 
The fees were small, but they sufficed, and made life a little 
easier to her host and his family. Amanda got very fond 
of her, and, without pretending to teach her, Juliet taught 
her a good deal. On Sundays she went to church ; and 
Dorothy, although it cost her a struggle to face the imputa- 
tion of resentment, by which the chapel-people would nec- 
essarily interpret the change, went regularly with her, in the 
growing hope of receiving light from the curate. Het 
father also not unfrequently accompanied her. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

TWO MINDS. 

All this time poor Faber, to his offer of himself to Juliet, 
had received no answer but a swoon — or something very 
near it. Every attempt he made to see her alone at the 
rectory had been foiled ; and he almost came to the conclu- 
sion that the curate and his wife had set themselves to prej- 
udice against himself a mind already prejudiced against his 
principles. It added to his uneasiness that, as he soon dis- 
covered, she went regularly to church. He knew the power 
and persuasion of Wingfold, and looked upon his influence 
as antagonistic to his hopes. Pride, anger, and fear were 
all at work in him ; but he went on calling, and did his best 
to preserve an untroubled demeanor. Juliet imagined no 
change in his feelings, and her behavior to him was not such 
as to prevent them from deepening still. 

Every time he went it was with a desperate resolution of 


PAUL FABER. 


135 


laying his hand on the veil in which she had wrapped her- 
self, but every time he found it impossible, for one reason 
or another, to make a single movement toward withdraw- 
ing it. Again and again he tried to write to her, but the 
haunting suspicion that she would lay his epistle before her 
new friends, always made him throw down his pen in a 
smothering indignation. He found himself compelled to 
wait what opportunity chance or change might afford him. 

When he learned that she had gone to live with the 
Drakes, it was a relief to him ; for although he knew the 
minister was far more personal in his hostility than Wing 
fold, he was confident his influence over her would not be 
so great ; and now he would have a better chance, he 
thought, of seeing her alone. Meantime he took satisfac- 
tion in knowing that he did not neglect a single patient, and 
that in no case had he been less successful either as to 
diagnosis or treatment because of his trouble. He pitied 
himself just a little as a martyr to the truth, a martyr the 
more meritorious that the truth to which he sacrificed him- 
self gave him no hope for the future, and for the present no 
shadow of compensation beyond the satisfaction of not 
being deceived. It remains a question, however, which 
there was no one to put to Faber — whether he had not 
some amends in relief from the notion, vaguely it may be, 
yet unpleasantly haunting many minds — of a Supreme Being 
— a Deity — putting forth claims to obedience — an uncom- 
fortable sort of phantom, however imaginary, for one to 
have brooding above him, and continually coming between 
him and the freedom of an else empty universe. To the 
human soul as I have learned to know it, an empty universe 
would be as an exhausted receiver to the lungs that thirst 
for air ; but Faber liked the idea ; how he would have liked 
the reality remains another thing. I suspect that what we 
call damnation is something as near it as it can be made ; 
itself it can not be, for even the damned must live by God’s 
life. Was it, I repeat, no compensation for his martyrdom 
to his precious truth, to know that to none had he to render 
an account ? Was he relieved from no misty sense of a 
moral consciousness judging his, and ready to enforce its 
rebuke — a belief which seems to me to involve the highest 
idea, the noblest pledge, the richest promise of our nature ? 
There may be men in whose turning from implicit to 
explicit denial, no such element of relief is concerned— I 
can not tell ; but although the structure of Paul Faber’s life 


136 


PAUL FABER. 


had in it material of noble sort, I doubt if he was one of 
such. 

The summer at length reigned lordly in the land. The 
roses were in bloom, from the black purple to the warm 
white. Ah, those roses ! He must indeed be a God who 
invented the roses. They sank into the red hearts of men 
and women, caused old men to sigh, young men to long, and 
women to weep with strange ecstatic sadness. But their 
scent made Faber lonely and poor, for the rose-heart would 
not open its leaves to him. 

The winds were soft and odor-laden. The wide meadows 
through which flowed the river, seemed to smite the eye 
with their greenness ; and the black and red and white kine 
bent down their sleek necks among the marsh-marigolds and 
the meadow-sweet and the hundred lovely things that 
border the level water-courses, and fed on the blessed grass. 
Along the banks, here with nets, there with rod and line, 
they caught the gleaming salmon, and his silver armor 
flashed useless in the sun. The old pastor sat much in his 
little summer-house, and paced his green walk on the border 
of the Lythe ; but in all the gold of the sunlight, in all the 
glow and the plenty around him, his heart was oppressed 
with the sense of his poverty. It was not that he could not 
do the thing he would, but that he could not meet and 
rectify the thing he had done. He could behave, he said to 
himself, neither as a gentleman nor a Christian, for lack of 
money ; and, worst of all, he could not get rid of a sense of 
wrong — of rebellious heavings of heart, of resentments, of 
doubts that came thick upon him — not of the existence of 
God, nor of His goodness towards men in general, but of 
His kindness to himself. Logically, no doubt, they were all 
bound in one, and the being that could be unfair to a beetle 
could not be God, could not make a beetle ; but our feelings, 
especially where a wretched self is concerned, are notably 
illogical. 

The morning of a glorious day came in with saffron, gold, 
and crimson. The color sobered, but the glory grew. 
The fleeting dyes passed, but the azure sky, the white 
clouds, and the yellow fire remained. The larks dropped 
down to their breakfast. The kine had long been busy at 
theirs, for they had slept their short night in the midst of 
their food. Every thing that could move was in motion, 
and what could not move was shining, and what could not 
shine was feeling warm. But the pastor was tossing rest- 


PAUL FABER. 


137 


less. He had a troubled night. The rent of his house 
fell due with the miserable pittance allowed him by the 
church ; but the hard thing was not that he had to pay 
nearly the whole of the latter to meet the former, but that 
he must first take it. The thought of that burned in his 
veins like poison. But he had no choice. To refuse it 
would be dishonest ; it would be to spare or perhaps indulge 
his feelings at the expense of the guiltless. He must not 
kill himself, he said, because he had insured his life, and 
the act would leave his daughter nearly destitute. Yet 
how was the insurance longer to be paid ? It was hard, 
with all his faults, to be brought to this ! It was hard that 
he who all his life had been urging people to have faith, 
should have his own turned into a mockery. 

Here heart and conscience together smote him. Well 
might his faith be mocked, for what better was it than a 
mockery itself ! Where was this thing he called his faith f 
Was he not cherishing, talking flat unbelief ? — as much as 
telling God he did not trust in Him ? Where was the faith- 
lessness of which his faithlessness complained ? A phan- 
tom of its own ! Yea, let God be true and every man a 
liar ! Had the hour come, and not the money ? A fine 
faith it was that depended on the very presence of the 
help ! — that required for its existence that the supply should 
come before the need ! — a fine faith in truth, which still 
would follow in the rear of sight ! — But why then did God 
leave him thus without faith ? Why did not God make 
him able to trust ? He had prayed quite as much for 
faith as for money. His conscience replied, “ That is 
your part — the thing you will not do. If God put faith into 
your heart without your stirring up your heart to believe, 
the faith would be God’s and not yours. It is true all is 
God’s ; he made this you call me^ and made it able to 
believe, and gave you Himself to believe in ; and if after 
that He were to make you believe without you doing your 
utmost part. He would be making you down again into a 
sort of holy dog, not making you grow a man like Christ 
Jesus His Son” — “But I have tried hard to trust in Him,” 
said the little self. — “ Yes, and then fainted and ceased,” 
said the great self, the conscience. 

Thus it went on in the poor man’s soul. Ever and anon 
he said to himself, “ Though He slay me, yet will I trust in 
Him,” and ever and anon his heart sickened afresh, and he 
said to himself, “ I shall go down to the grave with shame, 


138 


PAUL FABER. 


and my memorial will be debts unpaid, for the Lord hath 
forsaken me.” All the night he had lain wrestling with fear 
and doubt : fear was hard upon him, but doubt was much 
harder. “ If I could but trust,” he said, “ I could endure 
any thing.” 

In the splendor of the dawn, he fell into a troubled sleep, 
and a more troubled dream, which woke him again to mis- 
ery. Outside his chamber, the world was rich in light, in 
song, in warmth, in odor, in growth, in color, in space ; 
inside, all was to him gloomy, groanful, cold, musty, 
ungenial, dingy, confined ; yet there was he more at ease, 
shrunk from the light, and in the glorious morning that 
shone through the chinks of his shutters, saw but an alien 
common day, not the coach of his Father, come to carry 
him yet another stage toward his home. He was in want of 
nothing at the moment. There were no holes in the well- 
polished shoes that seemed to keep ghostly guard outside 
his chamber-door. The clothes that lay by his bedside 
were indeed a little threadbare, but sound and spotless. 
The hat that hung in the passage below might have been 
much shabbier without necessarily indicating poverty. His 
walking-stick had a gold knob like any earl’s. If he did 
choose to smoke a church-warden, he had a great silver- 
mounted meerschaum on his mantle-shelf. True, the 
butcher’s shop had for some time contributed nothing to his 
dinners, but his vegetable diet agreed with him. He would 
himself have given any man time, would as soon have taken 
his child by the throat as his debtor, had worshiped God 
after a bettering fashion for forty years at least, and yet 
would not give God time to do His best for him — the best 
that perfect love, and power limited only by the lack of full 
consent in the man himself, could do. 

His daughter always came into his room the first thing in 
the morning. It was plain to her that he had been more 
restless than usual, and at sight of his glazy red-rimmed 
eyes and gray face, her heart sank within her. For 
a moment she was half angry with him, thinking in herself 
that if she believed as he did, she would never trouble her 
heart about any thing : her head should do all the business. 
But with his faith, she would have done just the same as he. 
It is one thing to be so used to certain statements and 
modes of thought that you take all for true, and quite 
another so to believe the heart of it all, that you are in 
essential and imperturbable peace and gladness because of 


PAUL FABER. 


139 


it. But oh, how the poor girl sighed for the freedom of a 
God to trust in ! She could content herself with the husks 
the swine ate, if she only knew that a Father sat at the home- 
heart of the universe, wanting to have her. Faithful in her 
faithlessness, she did her best to comfort her believing 
father : beyond the love that offered it, she had but cold 
comfort to give. He did not listen to a word she said, and 
she left him at last with a sigh, and went to get him his 
breakfpt. When she returned, she brought him his letters 
with his tea and toast. He told her to take them away : she 
might open them herself if she liked ; they could be nothing 
but bills ! She might take the tray too ; he did not want any 
breakfast : what right had he to eat what he had no money 
to pay for ! There would be a long bill at the baker’s next ! 
What right had any one to live on other people ! Dorothy 
told him she paid for every loaf as it came, and that there 
was no bill at the baker’s, though indeed he had done his 
best to begin one. He stretched out his arms, drew her 
down to his bosom, said she was his only comfort, then 
pushed her away, turned his face to the wall, and wept. 
She saw it would be better to leave him, and, knowing 
in this mood he would eat nothing, she carried the tray 
with her. A few moments after, she came rushing up the 
stair like a wind, and entered his room swiftly, her face 
“ white with the whiteness of what is dead.” 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE minister’s BEDROOM. 

The next day, in the afternoon, old Lisbeth appeared at 
the rectory, with a hurried note, in which Dorothy begged 
Mr. Wingfold to come and see her father. The curate rose 
at once and went. When he reached the house, Dorothy, 
who had evidently been watching for his arrival, herself 
opened the door. 

“ What’s the matter ?” he asked. Nothing alarming, I 
hope ? ” 

“ I hope not,” she answered. There was a strange light 
on her face, like that of a sunless sky on a deep, shadowed 


140 


PAUL FABER. 


well. “ But I am a little alarmed about him. He has suf- 
fered much of late. Ah, Mr. Wingfold, you don’t know how 
good he is ! Of course, being no friend to the church— — ” 

“ I don’t wonder at that, the church is so little of a friend 
to herself,” interrupted the curate, relieved to find her so 
composed, for as he came along he had dreaded something 
terrible. 

“ He wants very much to see you. He thinks perhaps 
you may be able to help him. I am sure if you can’t nobody 
can. But please don’t heed much what he says about him- 
self. He is feverish and excited. There is such a thing — 
is there not ? — as a morbid humility ? I don’t mean a false 
humility, but one that passes over into a kind of self 
disgust.” 

“ I know what you mean,” answered the curate, laying 
down his hat : he never took his hat into a sick-room. 

Dorothy led the way up the narrow creaking stairs. 

It was a lowly little chamber in which the once popular 
preacher lay — not so good as that he had occupied when a 
boy, two stories above his father’s shop. That shop had 
been a thorn in his spirit in the days of his worldly success, 
but again and again this morning he had been remembering 
it as a very haven of comfort and peace. He almost forgot 
himself into a dream of it once ; for one blessed moment, 
through the upper half of the window he saw the snow fall- 
ing in the street, while he sat inside and half under the 
counter, reading Robinson Crusoe ! Could any thing short 
of heaven be so comfortable ? 

As the curate stepped in, a grizzled head turned toward 
him a haggard face with dry, bloodshot eyes, and a long 
hand came from the bed to greet him. 

“ Ah, Mr. Wingfold ! ” cried the minister, “ God has for- 
saken me. If He had only forgotten me, I could have borne 
that, I think ; for, as Job says, the time would have codie 
when He would have had a desire to the work of His hands. 
But He has turned His back upon me, and taken His free 
Spirit from me. He has ceased to take His own way, to do 
His will with me, and has given me my way and my will. Sit 
down, Mr. WingfoLd. You can not comfort me, but you are 
a true servant of God, and ’ I will tell you my sorrow. I 
am no friend to the church, as you know, but ” 

“ So long as you are a friend of its Head, that goes for 
little with me,” said the curate. “ But if you will allow 
me, I should like to say just one word on the matter.” 


PAUL FABER. 


141 

He wished to try what a diversion of thought might do ; 
not that he foolishly desired to make him forget his trouble, 
but that he knew from experience any gap might let in 
comfort. 

“ Say on, Mr. Wingfold. I am a worm and no man.” 

“ It seems, then, to me a mistake for any community to 
spend precious energy upon even a just finding of fault with 
another. The thing is, to trim the lamp and clean the glass 
of our own, that it may be a light to the world. It is just 
the same with communities as with individuals. The com- 
munity which casts if it be but the mote out of its own eye, 
does the best thing it can for the beam in its neighbor’s. 
For my part, I confess that, so far as the clergy form and 
represent the Church of England, it is and has for a long 
time been doing its best — not its worst, thank God — to 
serve God and Mammon.” 

“ Ah ! that’s my beam ! ” cried the minister. I have 
been serving Mammon assiduously. I served him not a 
little in the time of my prosperity, with confidence and show, 
and then in my adversity with fears and complaints. Our 
Lord tells us expressly that we are to take no thought for 
the morrow, because we can not serve God and Mammon. I 
have been taking thought for a hundred morrows, and that 
not patiently, but grumbling in my heart at His dealings with 
me. Therefore now He has cast me off.” 

“ How do you know that He has cast you off ? ’’asked the 
curate. 

“ Because He has given me my own way with such a ven- 
geance. I have been pulling, pulling my hand out of His, 
and He has let me go, and I lie in the dirt,” 

“ But you have not told me your grounds for conclud- 
ing so.” 

“ Suppose a child had been crying and fretting after his 
mother for a spoonful of jam,” said the minister, quite 
gravely, “ and at last she set him down to a whole pot — 
what would you say to that ? ” 

“ I should say she meant to give him a sharp lesson, 
perhaps a reproof as well — certainly not that she meant to 
cast him off,” answered Wingfold, laughing. “ But still I 
do not understand.” 

“ Have you not heard then ? Didn’t Dorothy tell you ? ” 
She has told me nothing.” 

“ Not that my old uncle has left me a hundred thousand 
pounds and more ? ” 


142 


PAUL FABER. 


The curate was on the point of saying, I am very glad 
to hear it,” when the warning Dorothy had given him 
returned to his mind, and with it the fear that the pastor 
was under a delusion — that, as a rich man is sometimes not 
unnaturally seized with the mania of imagined poverty, so 
this poor man’s mental barometer had, from excess of 
poverty, turned its index right round again to riches. 

“ Oh ! ” he returned, lightly and soothingly, “ perhaps it 
is not so bad as that. You may have been misinformed. 
There may be some mistake.” 

“ No, no ! ” returned the minister ; it is true, every word 
of it. You shall see the lawyers’ letter. Dorothy has it, I 
think. My uncle was an ironmonger in a country town, got 
on, and bought a little bit of land in which he found iron. 
I knew he was flourishing, but he was a churchman and a 
terrible Tory, and I never dreamed he would remember me. 
There had been no communication between our family and 
his for many years. He must have fancied me still a flourish- 
ing London minister, with a rich wife ! If he had had a 
suspicion of how sorely I needed a few pounds, I can not 
believe he would have left me a farthing. He did not save 
his money to waste it on bread and cheese, I can fancy him 
saying.” 

Although a look almost of despair kept coming and going 
upon his face, he lay so still, and spoke so quietly and col- 
lectedly, that Wingfold began to wonder whether there 
might not be some fact in his statement. He did not well 
know what to say. 

“ When I heard the news from Dorothy — she read the 
letter first,” Mr. Drake went on, “ — old fool that 1 was 
I was filled with such delight that, although I could not 
have said whether I believed or not, the very idea of the 
thing made me weep. Alas ! Mr. Wingfold, I have had vis- 
ions of God in which the whole world would not have 

seemed worth a salt tear ! And now ! 1 jumped out of 

bed, and hurried on my clothes, but by the time I came to 
kneel at my bedside, God was away. I could not speak a 
word to Him ! I had lost all the trouble that kept me 
crying after Him like a little child at his mother’s heels, the 
bond was broken and He was out of sight. I tried to be 
thankful, but my heart was so full of the money, it lay like 
a stuffed bag. But I dared not go even to my study till I 
had prayed. I tramped up and down this little room, 
thinking more about paying my butcher’s bill than any thing 


PAUL FABER. 


143 


else. I would give him a silver snuff-box ; but as to God 
and His goodness my heartfelt like a stone; \ could not 
lift it up. All at once I saw how it was : He had heard my 
prayers in anger ! Mr. Wingfold, the Lord has sent me this 
money as He sent the quails to the Israelites : while it was 
yet, as it were, between my teeth. He smote me with hard- 
ness of heart. O my God ! how shall I live in the world 
with a hundred thousand pounds instead of my Father in 
heaven ! If it were only that He had hidden His face, I 
should be able to pray somehow ! He has given me over 
to the Mammon I was worshiping ! Hypocrite that I am ! 
how often have I not pointed out to my people, while yet I 
dwelt in the land of Goshen, that to fear poverty was the 
same thing as to love money, for that both came of lack of 
faith in the living God ! Therefore has He taken from me 
the light of His countenance, which yet, Mr. Wingfold, with 
all my sins and shortcomings, yea, and my hypocrisy, is the 
all in all to me ! ” 

He looked the curate in the face with such wild eyes as 
convinced him that, even if perfectly sane at present, he 
was in no small danger of losing his reason. 

“ Then you would willingly give up this large fortune,” 
he said, “ and return to your former condition ? ” 

‘‘ Rather than not be able to pray — I would ! I would ! ” 
he cried ; then paused and added, “ — if only He would give 
me enough to pay my debts and not have to beg of other 
people.” 

Then, with a tone suddenly changed to one of agonized 
effort, with clenched hands, and eyes shut tight, he cried 
vehemently, as if in the face of a lingering unwillingness to 
encounter again the miseries through which he had been 
passing. 

“ No, no. Lord ! Forgive me. I will not think of con- 
ditions. Thy will be done ! Take the money and let me 
be a debtor and a beggar if Thou wilt, only let me pray to 
Thee ; and do Thou make it up to my creditors.” 

Wingfold’s spirit was greatly moved. Here was victory ! 
Whether the fortune was a fact or fancy, made no feature 
of difference. He thanked God and took courage. The 
same instant the door opened, and Dorothy came in hesi- 
tating, and looking strangely anxious. He threw her a 
face-question. She gently bowed her head, and gave him 
a letter with a brqad black border which she held in her 
hand. 


144 


PAUL FABER. 


He read it. No room for rational doubt was left. He 
folded it softly, gave it back to her, and rising, kneeled 
down by the bedside, near the foot, and said — 

“ Father, whose is the fullness of the earth, I thank Thee 
that Thou hast set my brother’s heel on the neck of his ene- 
my. But the suddenness of Thy relief from holy poverty 
and evil care, has so shaken his heart and brain, or rather, 
perhaps, has made him think so keenly of his lack of faith 
in his Father in heaven, that he fears Thou hast thrown him 
the gift in disdain, as to a dog under the table, though 
never didst Thou disdain a dog, and not given it as to a 
child, from Thy hand into his. Father, let Thy spirit come 
with the gift, or take it again, and make him poor and able 
to pray.” — Here came an aynen^ groaned out as from the 
bottom of a dungeon. — “ Pardon him. Father,” the curate 
prayed on, “ all his past discontent and the smallness of his 
faith. Thou art our Father, and Thou knowest us tenfold 
better than we know ourselves ; we pray Thee not only to 
pardon us, but to make all righteous excuse for us, when 
we dare not make any for ourselves, for Thou art the truth. 
We will try to be better children. We will go on climbing 
the mount of God through all the cloudy darkness that 
swaths it, yea, even in the face of the worst terrors — that 
when we reach the top, we shall find no one there.” — Here 
Dorothy burst into sobs. — “ Father ! ” thus the curate ended 
his prayer, “ take pity on Thy children. Thou wilt not give 
them a piece of bread, in place of a stone — to poison them ! 
The egg Thou givest will not be a serpent’s. We are Thine, 
and Thou art ours : in us be Thy will done ! Amen.” 

As he rose from his knees, he saw that the minister had 
turned his face to the wall, and lay perfectly still. Rightly 
judging that he was renewing the vain effort to rouse, by 
force of the will, feelings which had been stunned by the 
strange shock, he ventured to try a more authoritative mode 
of address. 

And now, Mr. Drake, you have got to spend this 
money,” he said, and the sooner you set about it the bet- 
ter. Whatever may be your ideas about the principal, you 
are bound to spend at least every penny of the income.” 

The sad-hearted man stared at the curate. 

“ How is a man to do any thing whom God has for- 
saken ? ” he said. 

If He had forsaken you, for as dreary work as it would 
be, you would have to try to do your duty notwithstanding. 


PAUL FABER. 


145 


But He has not forsaken you. He has given you a very 
sharp lesson, I grant, and as such you must take it, but that 
is the very opposite of forsaking you. He has let you know 
what it is not to trust in Him, and what it would be to have 
money that did not come from His hand. You did not con- 
quer in the fight with Mammon when you were poor, and 
God has given you another chance : He expects you to get 
the better of him now you are rich. If God had forsaken 
you, I should have found you strutting about, and glorying 
over imagined enemies." 

“ Do you really think that is the mind of God toward 
me ? " cried the poor man, starting half up in bed. “ Do 
you think so ? " he repeated, staring at the curate almost as 
wildly as at first, but with a different expression. 

“ I do," said Wingfold ; and it will be a bad job indeed 
if you fail in both trials. But that I am sure you will not. 
It is your business now to get this money into your hands 
as soon as possible, and proceed to spend it." 

“ Would there be any harm in ordering a few things from 
the tradespeople ? " asked Dorothy. 

“ How should there be ?" returned Wingfold. 

‘‘ Because, you see,” answered Dorothy, “ we can’t be sure 
of a bird in the bush." 

“ Can you be sure of it in your hands ? It may spread 
its wings when you least expect it. But Helen will be 
delighted to take the risk — up to a few hundreds," he added 
laughing. 

“ Somebody may dispute the will : they do sometimes," 
said Dorothy. 

“ They do very often," answered Wingfold. “ It does not 
look likely in the present case ; but our trust must be 
neither in the will nor in the fortune, but in the living God. 
You have to get all the^^^^ out of this money you can. If 
you will walk over to the rectory with me now, while your 
father gets up, we will carry the good news to my wife, and 
she will lend you what money you like, so that you need 
order nothing without paying for it." 

“ Please ask her not to tell any body," said Mr. Drake. 
“ I shouldn’t like it talked about before I understand it 
myself." 

“ You are quite right. If I were you I would tell nobody 
yet but Mr. Drew. He is a right man, and will help you to 
bear your good fortune. I have always found good fortune 
harder to bear than bad." 


146 


PAUL FABER. 


Dorothy ran to put her bonnet on. The curate went 
back to the bedside. Mr. Drake had again turned his face 
to the wall. 

“ Sixty years of age ! ” he was murmuring to himself. 

“ Mr. Drake,” said Wingfold, “ so long as you bury your- 
self with the centipedes in your own cellar, instead of going 
out into God’s world, you are tempting Satan and Mammon 
together to come and tempt you. Worship the God who 
made the heaven and the earth, and the sea and the mines 
of iron and gold, by doing His will in the heart of them. 
Don’t worship the poor picture of Him you have got hang- 
ing up in your closet ; — worship the living power beyond 
your ken. Be strong in Him whose is your strength, and all 
strength. Help Him in His work with His own. Give life to 
His gold. Rub the canker off it, by sending it from hand 
to hand. You must rise and bestir yourself. I will come 
and see you again to-morrow. Good-by for the present.” 

He turned away and walked from the room. But his 
hand had scarcely left the lock, when he heard the minister 
alight from his bed upon the floor. 

“ He’ll do ! ” said the curate to himself, and walked down 
the stair. 

When he got home, he left Dorothy with his wife, and 
going to his study, wrote the following verses, which had 
grown ill his mind as he walked silent beside her : — 

WHAT MAN IS THERE OF YOU? 

The homely words, how often read ! 

How seldom fully known ! 

“ Which father of you, aske’d for bread. 

Would give his son a stone ? ” > 

How oft has bitter tear been shed, x 
And heaved how many a groan, 

Because Thou wouldst not give for bread 
The thing that was a stone ! 

How oft the child Thou wouldst have fed. 

Thy gift away has thrown ! 

He prayed. Thou heardst, and gav’s^t the bread : 

He cried, it is a stone ! 

Lord, if I ask in doubt or dread ;• 

Lest I be left to moan — 

I am the man who, asked for bread. 

Would give his son a stone. 

' As Dorothy returned from the rectory, where Helen had 


PAUL FABER. 


147 


made her happier than all the money by the kind words she 
said to her, she stopped at Mr. Jones’ shop, and bought of 
him a bit of loin of mutton. 

“ Shan’t I put it down, miss ? ” he suggested, seeing her 
take out her purse. — Helen had just given her the purse : 
they had had great fun, with both tears and laughter over 
it. 

“ I would rather not — thank you very much,” she replied 
with a smile. 

He gave her a kind, searching glance, and took the 
money. 

That day Juliet dined with them. When the joint ap- 
peared, Amanda, who had been in the kitchen the greater 
part of the morning, clapped her hands as at sight of an old 
acquaintance. 

“ Dere it comes ! dere it comes ! ” she cried. 

But the minister’s grace was a little longer than she liked, 
for he was trying hard to feel grateful. I think some peo- 
ple mistake pleasure and satisfaction for thankfulness : Mr. 
Drake was not so to be taken in. Ere long, however, he 
found them a good soil for thankfulness to grow in. — So 
Amanda fidgeted not a little, and the moment the grace 
was over — 

“ Now ’en ! now ’en ! ” she almost screamed, her eyes 
sparkling with delight. “ ’Iss is dinner ! — ’Ou don’t have 
dinner every day. Miss Mellidif ! ” 

“ Be quiet. Ducky,” said her aunt, as she called her. 

You mustn’t make any remarks.” 

“ Ducky ain’t makin’ no marks,” returned the child, look- 
ing anxiously at the table-cloth, and was quiet but not for 
long. 

Lisbef say surely papa’s sip come home wif ’e nice din- 
ner ! ” she said next. 

“ No, my ducky,” said Mr. Drake : “ it was God’s ship 
that came with it.” 

“ Dood sip ! ” said the child. 

“It will come one day and another, and carry us all 
home,” said the minister. 

“ Where Ducky’s yeal own papa and mamma yive in a big 
house, papa ? ” asked Amanda, more seriously. 

“ I will tell you more about it when you are older,” said 
Mr. Drake. “ Now let us eat the dinner God has sent us.” 
He was evidently far happier already, though his daughter 
could see that every now and then his thoughts were away ; 


148 


PAUL FABER. 


she hoped they were thanking God. Before dinner was 
over, he was talking quite cheerfully, drawing largely from 
his stores both of reading and experience. After the child 
was gone, they told Juliet of their good fortune. She con- 
gratulated them heartily, then looked a little grave, and 
said — 

“ Perhaps you would like me to go ? ” 

What ! ” said Mr. Drake ; “ does your friendship go no 
further than that ? Having helped us so much in adversity, 
will you forsake us the moment prosperity looks in at the 
window ? ” 

Juliet gave one glance at Dorothy, smiled, and said no 
more. For Dorothy, she was already building a castle for 
Juliet — busily. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

Juliet’s chamber. 

After tea, Mr. Drake and Dorothy went out for a walk 
together — a thing they had not once done since the church- 
meeting of acrid memory in which had been decreed the 
close of the minister’s activity, at least in Glaston. It was 
a lovely June twilight ; the bats were flitting about like the 
children of the gloamin’, and the lamps of the laburnum 
and lilac hung dusky among the trees of Osterfield Park, 
Juliet, left all. but alone in the house, sat at her window, 
reading. Her room was on the first floor, but the dining- 
room beneath it was of low pitch, and at the lane-door there 
were two steps down into the house, so that her window 
was at no great height above the lane. It was open, but 
there was little to be seen from it, for immediately opposite 
rose a high old garden-wall, hiding every thing with its gray 
bulk, lovelily blotted with lichens and moss, brown and 
green and gold, except the wall-flowers and stone-crop tnar 
grew on its coping, and a running plant that hung down 
over it, like a long fringe worn thin. Had she put her head 
out of the window, she would have seen in the one direction 
a cow-house, and in the other the tall narrow iron gate of 
the garden — and that was all. The twilight deepened as 


PAUL FABER. 


149 


she read, until the words before her began to play hide and 
seek ; they got worse and worse, until she was tired of 
catching at them ; and when at last she stopped for a mo- 
ment, they were all gone like a troop of fairies, and her 
reading was ended. She closed the book, and was soon 
dreaming awake ; and the twilight world was the globe in 
which the dream-fishes came and went — now swelling up 
strange and near, now sinking away into the curious dis- 
tance. 

Her mood was broken by the sound of hoofs, which she 
almost immediately recognized as those of the doctor’s red 
horse — great hoofs falling at the end of long straight-flung 
steps. Her heart began to beat violently, and confident in 
the protection of the gathering night, she rose and looked 
cautiously out toward the side on which was the approach. 
In a few moments, round the furthest visible corner, and past 
the gate in the garden-wall, swung a huge shadowy form — 
gigantic in the dusk. She drew back her head, but ere she 
could shape her mind to retreat from the window, the solid 
gloom hurled itself thundering past, and she stood trembling 
and lonely, with the ebb of Ruber’s paces in her ears — and 
in her hand a letter. In a minute she came to herself, closed 
her window, drew down the blind, lighted a candle, set it on the 
window-sill, and opened the letter. It contained these verses, 
and nothing more : — 

My morning rose in laughter — 

A gold and azure day. 

Dull clouds came trooping after, 

Livid, and sullen gray. 

At noon, the rain did batter, 

And it thundered like a hell ; 

I sighed, it is no matter. 

At night I shall sleep as well. 

But I longed with a madness tender 
For an evening like the mom. 

That my day might die in splendor. 

Not folded in mist forlorn — 

Die like a tone elysian. 

Like a bee in a cactus-flower. 

Like a day-surprised vision. 

Like a wind in a summer shower. 

Through the vaulted clouds about me 
Broke trembling an azure space : 


PAUL FABER. 


150 


Was it a dream to flout me — 

Or was it a perfect face ? 

The sky and the face together 

Are gone, and the wind blows fell. 

But what matters dream or the weather ? 

At night it will all be well. 

For the day of life and labor, 

Of ecstasy and pain, 

Is only a beaten tabor. 

And I shall not dream again. 

But as the old Night steals o’er me, 

Deepening till all is dead, 

I shall see thee still before me 
Stand with averted head. 

And I shall think. Ah sorrow ! 

The might that never was may / 

The night that has no morrow I 
And the sunset all in gray ! 

Juliet laid her head on her hands and wept. 

“ Why should I not let him have his rosy sunset ? ” she 
thought. “ It is all he hopes for — cares for, I think — poor 
fellow ! Am I not good enough to give him that ? What 
does it matter about me, if it is all but a vision that flits be- 
tween heaven and earth, and makes a passing shadow on 
human brain and nerves ? — a tale that is telling — then a tale 
that is told ! Much the good people make out of their bet- 
ter faith ! Should I be troubled to learn that it was indeed 
a lasting sleep ? If I were dead, and found myself waking, 
should I want to rise, or go to sleep again ? Why should 
not I too dare to hope for an endless rest ? Where would 
be the wrong to any ? If there be a God, He will have but 
to wake me to punish me hard enough. Why should I not 
hope at least for such a lovely thing ? Can any one help 
desiring peace ? Oh, to sleep, and sleep, and wake no more 
forever and ever ! I would not hasten the sleep ; the end 
will surely come, and why should we not enjoy the dream a 
little longer — at least while it is a good dream, and the tossing 
has not begun ? There would always be a time. Why wake 
before our time out of the day into the dark nothing ? I 
should always want to see what to-morrow and to-morrow 
and to-morrow would bring — that is, so long as he loved me. 
He is noble, and sad, and beautiful, and gracious ! — but 
would he — could he love me to the end — even if — ? Why 


PAUL FABER. 


151 

should we not make the best of what we have ? Why should 
we not make life as happy to ourselves and to others as we 
can — however worthless, however arrant a cheat it may be ? 
Even if there be no such thing as love, if it be all but a 
lovely vanity, a bubble-play of color, why not let the bub- 
ble-globe swell, and the tide of its ocean of color flow and 
rush and mingle and change ? Will it not break at last, and 
the last come soon enough, when of all the glory is left but 
a tear on the grass ? When we dream a pleasant dream, and 
know it is but a dream, we will to dream on, and quiet our 
minds that it may not be scared and flee : why should we 
not yield to the stronger dream, that it may last yet another 
sweet, beguiling moment ? Why should he not love me — 
kiss me ? Why should we not be sad together, that we are 
not and can not be the real man and woman we would — that 
we are but the forms of a dream — the fleeting shadows of the 
night of Nature ? — mourn together that the meddlesome hand 
of fate should have roused us to consciousness and aspiration 
so long before the maturity of our powers that we are but a 
laughter — no — a scorn and a weeping to ourselves ? We could 
at least sympathize with each other in our common misery — 
bear with its weakness, comfort its regrets, hide its mortifi- 
cations, cherish its poor joys, and smooth the way down the 
steepening slope to the grave ! Then, if in the decrees of 
blind fate, there should be a slow, dull procession toward 
perfection, if indeed some human God be on the way to be 
born, it would be grand, although we should know nothing 
of it, to have done our part fearless and hopeless, to have 
lived and died that the triumphant Sorrow might sit throned 
on the ever dying heart of the universe. But never, never 
would I have chosen to live for that ! Yes, one might choose 
to be born, if there were suffering one might live or die to 
soften, to cure ! That would be to be like Paul Faber. To 
will to be born for that would be grand indeed ! ” 

In paths of thought like these her mind wandered, her 
head lying upon her arms on the old-fashioned, wide-spread 
window-sill. At length, weary with emotion and weeping, 
she fell fast asleep, and slept for some time. 

The house was very still. Mr. Drake and Dorothy were 
in no haste to return. Amanda was asleep, and Lisbeth was 
in the kitchen — perhaps also asleep. 

Juliet woke with a great start. Arms were around her 
from behind, lifting her from her half-prone position of sor- 
rowful rest. With a terrified cry, she strove to free herself. 


152 


PAUL FABER. 


“ Juliet, my love ! my heart ! be still, and let me speak,” 
said Faber, His voice trembled as if full of tears. “ I can 
bear this no longer. You are my fate. I never lived till I 
knew you. I shall cease to live when I know for certain that 
you turn from me.” 

Juliet was like one half-drowned, just lifted from the 
water, struggling to beat it away from eyes and ears and 
mouth. 

“ Pray leave me, Mr. Faber,” she cried, half-terrified, 
half-bewildered, as she rose and turned toward him. But 
while she pushed him away with one hand, she uncon- 
sciously clasped his arm tight with ftie other. “ You have 
no right to come into my room, and surprise me — startle 
me so ! Do go away. I will come to you.” 

“ Pardon, pardon, my angel ! Do not speak so loud,” 
he said, falling on his knees, and clasping hers. 

Do go away,” persisted Juliet, trying to remove his 
grasp. “ What will they think if they find us — you here. 
They know I am perfectly well.” 

“ You drive me to liberties that make me tremble, Juliet. 
Everywhere you avoid me. You are never to be seen with- 
out some hateful protector. Ages ago I put up a prayer 
to you — one of life or death to me, and, like the God you 
believe in, you have left it unanswered. You have no pity 
on the sufferings you cause me ! If your God be cruel, 
why should you be cruel too ? Is not one tormentor enough 
in your universe ? If there be a future let us go on together 
to find it. If there be not, let us yet enjoy what of life may 
be enjoyed. My past is a sad one ” 

Juliet shuddered. 

“ Ah, my beautiful, you too have suffered ! ” he went on. 

Let us be angels of mercy to each other, each helping the 
other to forget ! My griefs I should count worthless if I 
might but erase yours.” 

“ I would I could say the same ! ” said Juliet, but only in 
her heart. 

“ Whatever they may have been,” he continued, my 
highest ambition shall be to make you forget them. We 
will love like beings whose only eternity is the moment. 
Come with me, Juliet ; we will go down into the last darkness 
together, loving each other— and then peace. At least there is 
no eternal hate in my poor, ice-cold religion, as there is in 
yours. I am not suffering alone, Juliet. All whom it is 
my work to relieve, are suffering from your unkindness. 


PAUL FABER. 


153 


For a time I prided myself that I gave every one of them 
as full attention as before, but I can not keep it up. I am 
defeated. My brain seems deserting me. I mistake symp- 
toms, forget cases, confound medicines, fall into incredible 
blunders. My hand trembles, my judgment wavers, my 
will is undecided. Juliet, you are ruining me.” 

“ He saved my life,” said Juliet to herself, “and that it 
is which has brought him to this. He has a claim to me. 
I am his property. He found me a castaway on the shore 
of Death, and gave me his life to live with. He must not 
suffer where I can prevent it.” — She was on the point of 
yielding. 

The same moment she heard a step in the lane approach- 
ing the door. 

“ If you love me, do go now, dear Mr. Faber,” she said. 
“ I will see you again. Do not urge me further to-night. — 
Ah, I wish ! I wish ! ” she added, with a deep sigh, and 
ceased. 

The steps came up to the door. There came a knock at 
it. They heard Lisbeth go to open it. Faber rose. 

“ Go into the drawing-room,” said Juliet. “ Lisbeth 
may be coming to fetch me ; she must not see you here.” 

He obeyed. Without a word he left the chamber, and 
went into the drawing-room. He had been hardly a mo- 
ment there, when Wingfold entered. It was almost dark, 
but the doctor stood against the window, and the curate 
knew him. 

“ Ah, Faber ! ” he said, “ it is long since I saw you. But 
each has been about his work, I suppose, and there could 
not be a better reason.” 

“ Under different masters, then,” returned Faber, a little 
out of temper. 

“ I don’t exactly think so. All good work is done under 
the same master.” 

“ Pooh ! Pooh ! ” 

“ Who is your master, then ? ” 

“ My conscience. Who is yours ? ” 

“ The Author of my conscience.” 

“ A legendary personage ! ” 

“ One who is every day making my conscience harder 
upon me. Until I believed in Him, my conscience was dull 
and stupid — not half-awake, indeed.” 

“ Oh ! I see ! You mean my conscience is dull and 
stupid.” 


154 


PAUL FABER. 


I do not. But if you were once lighted up with the 
light of the world, you would pass just such a judgment on 
yourself. I can’t think you so different from myself, as 
that that shouldn’t be the case ; though most heartily I 
grant you do your work ten times better than I did. And 
all the time I thought myself an honest nan ! I wasn’t. A 
man may honestly think himself honest, and a fresh week’s 
experience may make him doubt it altogether. I sorely 
want a God to make me honest.” 

Here Juliet entered the room, greeted Mr. Wingfold, and 
then shook hands with Faber. He was glad the room was 
dark. 

“ What do you think. Miss Meredith — is a man’s con- 
science enough for his guidance ? ” said the curate. 

I don’t know any thing about a man’s conscience,” 
answered Juliet. 

“ A woman’s then ? ” said the curate. 

What else has she got ? ” returned Juliet. 

The doctor was inwardly cursing the curate for talking 
shop. Only, if a man knows nothing so good, so beautiful, 
so necessary, as the things in his shop, what else ought he 
to talk — especially if he is ready to give them without money 
and without price ? The doctor would have done better to 
talk shop too. 

“ Of course he has nothing else,” answered the curate ; 
“ and if he had, he must follow his conscience all the 
same.” 

“ There you are, Wingfold ! — always talking paradoxes ! ” 
said Faber. 

“ Why, man ! you may only have a blundering boy to 
guide you, but if he is your only guide, you must follow 
him. You don’t therefore call him a sufficient guide ! ” 

“ What a logomachist you are ! If it is a horn lantern 
you’ve got, you needn’t go mocking at it.” 

“ The lantern is not the light. Perhaps you can not 
change your horn for glass, but what if you could better 
the light ? Suppose the boy’s father knew all about the 
country, but you never thought it worth while to send the 
lad to him for instructions ? ” 

“ Suppose I didn’t believe he had a father? Suppose he 
told me he hadn’t ? ” 

Some men would call out to know if there was any body 
in the house to give the boy a useful hint.” 

“Oh bother ! I’m quite content with my fellow.” 


PAUL FABER. 


155 


“ Well, for my part I should count my conscience, were it 
ten times better than it is, poor company on any journey. 
Nothing less than the living Truth ever with me can make 
existence a peace to me, — that’s the joy of the Holy Ghost, 
Miss Meredith. — What if you should find one day, Faber, 
that, of all facts, the thing you have been so coolly refusing 
was the most precious and awful ? ” 

Faber had had more than enough of it. There was but 
one thing precious to him ; Juliet was the perfect flower of 
nature, the apex of law, the last presentment of evolution, 
the final reason of things ! The very soul of the world 
stood there in the dusk, and there also stood the foolish 
curate, whirling his little vortex of dust and ashes between 
him and her ! 

“ It comes to th’^s,” said Faber; “what you say moves 
nothing in me. I am aware of no need, no want of that 
Being of whom yoi^ speak. Surely if in Him I did live and 
move and have my being, as some old heathen taught your 
Saul of Tarsus, J should in one mode or another be aware 
of Him ! ” 

While he spok^, Mr. Drake and Dorothy had come into 
the room. They stood silent. 

“ That is a weighty word,” said Wingfold. “ But what if 
you feel His pr^isence every moment, only do not recognize 
it as such ? ” 

“ Where wo^dJ be the good of it to me then ? ” 

“ The go'^d of it to you might lie in the blinding. What 
if any further revelation to one who did not seek it would 
but obstruct the knowledge of Flim ? Truly revealed, the 
word would be read untruly — even as The Word has been 
read by many in all ages. Only the pure in heart, we are 
told, shall see Him. The man who, made by Him, does 
not desire Him — how should he know Him ? ” 

“ Why don’t 1 desire Him then ? — I don’t.” 

“ That is for you to find out.” 

“ I do what I know to be right ; even on your theory 
I ought to get on,” said Faber, turning from him with a laugh. 

“ I think so too,” replied Wingfold. “ Go on, and prosper. 
Only, if there be untruth in you alongside of the truth — ? 
It might be, and you are not awake to it. It is marvelous 
what things can co-exist in a human mind.” 

“ In that case, why should not your God help me ? ” 

“ Why not ? I think he will. But it may have to be in a 
way you will not like.” 


156 


PAUL FABER. 


“ Well, well ! good night. Talk is but talk, whatever be 
the subject of it. — I beg your pardon,” he added, shaking 
hands with the minister and his daughter ; “ I did not see 
you come in. Good night.” 

“ I won’t allow that talk is only talk, Faber,” Wingfold 
called after him with a friendly laugh. Then turning to Mr. 
Drake, “ Pardon me,” he said, “ for treating you with so 
much confidence. I saw you come in, but believed you 
would rather have us end our talk than break it off.” 

“ Certainly. But I can’t help thinking you grant him too 
much, Mr. Wingfold,” said the minister seriously. 

“ I never find I lose by giving, even in argument,” said the 
curate. “ Faber rides his hobby well, but the brute is a sorry 
jade. He will find one day she has not a sound joint in her 
whole body.” 

The man who is anxious to hold every point, will speedily 
bring a question to a mere dispute about trifles, leaving the 
real matter, whose elements may appeal to the godlike in 
every man, out in the cold. Such a man, having gained his 
paltry point, will crow like the bantam he is, while the 
other, who may be the greater, perhaps the better man, 
although in the wrong, is embittered by his smallness, and 
turns away with increased prejudice. Human nature can 
hardly be blamed for its readiness to impute to the case the 
shallowness of its pleader. Few men do more harm than 
those who, taking the right side, dispute for personal victory, 
and argue, as they are sure then to do, ungenerously. But 
even genuine argument for the truth is not preaching the 
gospel, neither is he whose unbelief is thus assailed, likely to 
be brought thereby into any mood but one unfit for receiving 
it. Argument should be kept to books ; preachers ought to 
have nothing to do with it — at all events in the pulpit. 
There let them hold forth light, and let him who will, receive 
it, and him who will not, forbear. God alone can convince, 
and till the full time is come for the birth of the truth in a 
soul, the words of even the Lord Himself are not there 
potent. 

“ The man irritates me, I confess,” said Mr. Drake. I 
do not say he is self-satisfied, but he is very self-suffi- 
cient.” 

“ He is such a good fellow,” said Wingfold, “ that I think 
God will not let him go on like this very long. I think we 
shall live to see a change upon him. But much as I esteem 
and love the man, I can not help a suspicion that he has a 


PAUL FABER. 


157 


great lump of pride somewhere about him, which has not a 
little to do with his denials.” 

Juliet’s blood seemed seething in her veins as she heard her 
lover thus weighed, and talked over ; and therewith came the 
first rift of a threatened breach betwixt her heart and the 
friends who had been so good to her. He had done far 
more for her than any of them, and mere loyalty seemed to 
call upon her to defend him ; but she did not know how, 
and, dissatisfied with herself as well as indignant with them, 
she maintained an angry silence. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

OSTER FIELD PARK. 

It was a long time since Mr. Drake and Dorothy had had 
such a talk together, or had spent such a pleasant evening 
as that on which they went into Osterfield Park to be alone 
with a knowledge of their changed fortunes. The anxiety 
of each, differing so greatly from that of the other, had 
tended to shut up each in loneliness beyond the hearing of 
the other ; so that, while there was no breach in their love, 
it was yet in danger of having long to endure 

“ an expansion, 

Like gold to airy thinness beat.” 

But this evening their souls rushed together. The father’s 
anxiety was chiefly elevated ; the daughter’s remained much 
what it was before ; yet these anxieties no longer availed to 
keep them apart. 

Each relation of life has its peculiar beauty of holiness ; 
but that beauty is the expression of its essential truth, and 
the essence itself is so strong that it bestows upon its em- 
bodiment even the power of partial metamorphosis with all 
other vital relations. How many daughters have in the 
devotion of their tenderness, become as mothers to their 
own fathers ! Who has not known some sister more of a 
wife to a man than she for whose sake he neglected her ? 
But it will take the loves of all the relations of life gathered 
in one, to shadow the love which, in the kingdom of heaven, 


PAUL FABER. 


158 

is recognized as due to each from each human being per se. 
It is for the sake of the essential human, that all human 
relations and all forms of them exist — that we may learn 
what it is, and become capable of loving it aright. 

Dorothy would now have been as a mother to her father, 
had she had but a good hope, if no more, of finding her Father 
in heaven. She was not at peace enough to mother any 
body. She had indeed a grasp of the skirt of His robe — 
only she could not be sure it was not the mere fringe of a 
cloud she held. Not the less was her father all her care, and 
pride, and joy. Of his faults she saw none : there was 
enough of the noble and generous in him to hide them from 
a less partial beholder than a daughter. They had never 
been serious in comparison with his virtues. I do not 
mean that every fault is not so serious that a man must be 
willing to die twenty deaths to get rid of it ; but that, rela- 
tively to the getting rid of it, a fault is serious or not, in pro- 
portion to the depth of its root, rather than the amount of 
its foliage. Neither can that be the worst-conditioned fault, 
the man’s own suspicion of which would make him hang his 
head in shame ; those are his worst faults which a man will 
start up to defend ; those are the most dangerous moral 
diseases whose symptoms are regarded as the signs of 
health. 

Like lovers they walked out together, with eyes only for 
each other, for the good news had made them shy — through 
the lane, into the cross street, and out into Pine street, along 
which they went westward, meeting the gaze of the low sun, 
which wrapped them round in a veil of light and dark, for 
the light made their eyes dark, so that they seemed feeling 
their way out of the light into tl^e shadow. 

“ This is like life,” said the pastor, looking down at the 
precious face beside him : ‘‘ our eyes can best see from under 
the shadow of afflictions.” 

“ I would rather it were from under the shadow of God’s 
wings,” replied Dorothy timidly. 

“ So it is ! so it is ! Afflictions are but the shadow of His 
wings,” said her father eagerly. “ Keep there, my child, and 
you will never need the afflictions I have needed. I have 
been a hard one to save.” 

But the child thought within herself, “ Alas, father ! you 
have never had any afflictions which you or I either could 
not bear tenfold better than what I have to bear.” She was 
perhaps right. Only she did not know that when she got 


PAUL FABER. 


159 


through, all would be transfigured with the light of her 
resurrection, just as her father’s poverty now was in the light 
of his plenty. 

Little more passed between them in the street. All the 
way to the entrance of the park they were silent. There they 
exchanged a few words with the sweet-faced little dwarf- 
woman that opened the gate, and those few words set the 
currents of their thoughts singing yet more sweetly as they 
flowed. They entered the great park, through the trees that 
bordered it, still in silence, but when they reached the wide 
expanse of grass, with its clumps of trees and thickets, simul- 
taneously they breathed a deep breath of the sweet wind, 
and the fountains of their deeps were broken up. The 
evening was lovely, they wandered about long in delight, 
and much was the trustful converse they held. It was 
getting dark before they thought of returning. 

The father had been telling the daughter how he had 
mourned and wept when his boys were taken from him, 
never thinking at all of the girl who was left him. 

“ And now,” he said, “ I would not part with my Dorothy 
to have them back the finest boys in the world. What 
would my old age be without you, my darling ? ” 

Dorothy’s heart beat high. Surely there must be a Father 
in heaven too ! They walked a while in a great silence, for 
the heart of each was full. And all the time scarce an allu- 
sion had been made to the money. 

As they returned they passed the new house, at some dis- 
tance, on the highest point in the park. It stood unfinished, 
with all its windows boarded up. 

“ The walls of that house,” said Mr. Drake, ‘‘ were scarcely 
above ground when I came to Glaston. So they had been 
for twenty years, and so they remained until, as you remem- 
ber, the building was recommenced some three or four years 
ago. Now, again, it is forsaken, and only the wind is at 
home in it.” 

“ They tell me the estate is for sale,” said Dorothy. 
“ Those building-lots, just where the lane leads into Pine 
street, I fancy belong to it.” 

“ I wish,” returned her father, “ they would sell me that 
tumble-down place in the hollow they call the Old House of 
Glaston. I shouldn’t mind paying a good sum for it. What 
a place it would be to live in ! And what a pleasure there 
would be in the making of it once more habitable, and watch- 
ing order dawn out of neglect ! ” 


i6o 


PAUL FABER. 


“ It would be delightful," responded Dorothy. When I 
was a child, it was one of my dreams that that house was my 
papa's — with the wild garden and all the fruit, and the terri- 
ble lake, and the ghost of the lady that goes about in the 
sack she was drowned in. But would you really buy it, 
father, if you could get it ? " 

“ I think I should, Dorothy," answered Mr. Drake. 
‘‘Would it not be damp — so much in the hollow? Is it 
not the lowest spot in the park ? ” 

“ In the park — yes ; for the park drains into it. But the 
park lies high ; and you must note that the lake, deep as 
it is — very deep, yet drains into the Lythe. For all they say 
of no bottom to it, I am nearly sure the deepest part of the 
lake is higher than the surface of the river. If I am right, 
then we could, if we pleased, empty the lake altogether — not 
that I should like the place nearly so well without it. The 
situation is charming — and so sheltered ! — looking full 
south — just the place to keep open house in ! " 

“ That is just like you, father ! " cried Dorothy, clapping 
her hands once and holding them together as as she looked 
up at him. “ The very day you are out of prison, you want 
to begin to keep an open house ! — Dear father ! " 

“ Don’t mistake me, my darling. There was a time, long 
ago, after your mother was good enough to marry me, when 
— I am ashamed to confess it even to you, my child — I did 
enjoy making a show. I wanted people to see, that, although 
I was a minister of a sect looked down upon by the wealthy 
priests of a worldly establishment, I knew how to live after 
the world’s fashion as well as they. That time you will 
scarcely recall, Dorothy ? ’’ 

“ I remember the coachman’s buttons," answered Dorothy. 
“ Well ! I suppose it will be the same with not a few times 
and circumstances we may try to recall in the other world. 
Some insignificant thing will be all, and fittingly too, by 
which we shall be able to identify them. — I liked to give nice 
dinner parties, and we returned every invitation we accepted. 
I took much pains to have good wines, and the right wines 
with the right dishes, and all that kind of thing — though I 
dare .say I made more blunders than I knew. Your mother 
had been used to that way of living, and it was no show in 
her as it was in me. Then I was proud of my library and the 
rare books in it. I delighted in showing them, and talking over 
the rarity of this edition, the tallness of that copy, the bind- 
ing, and such-like follies. And where was the wonder, see- 


PAUL FABER. 


i6i 


ing I served religion so much in the same way — descanting 
upon the needlework that clothed the king’s daughter, in- 
stead of her inward glory ! I do not say always, for I had 
my better times. But how often have I not insisted on the 
mint and anise and cummin, and forgotten the judgment, 
mercy and faith ! How many sermons have I not preached 
about the latchets of Christ’s shoes, when I might have been 
talking about Christ himself ! But now I do not want a 
good house to make a show with any more : I want to be 
hospitable. I don’t call giving dinners being hospitable. I 
would have my house a hiding-place from the wind, a covert 
from the tempest. That would be to be hospitable. Ah ! 
if your mother were with us, my child ! But you will be my 
little wife, as you have been for so many years now. — God 
keeps open house ; I should like to keep open house. — I 
wonder does any body ever preach hospitality as a Christian 
duty ? ” 

“ I hope you won’t keep a butler, and set up for grand, 
father,” said Dorothy. 

“ Indeed I will not, my child. I would not run the risk 
of postponing the pleasure of the Lord to that of inhospitable 
servants. I will look to you to keep a warm, comfortable, 
welcoming house, and such servants only as shall be hospi- 
table in heart and behavior, and make no difference between 
the poor and the rich.” 

“ I can’t feel that any body is poor,” said Dorothy, after a 
pause, “ except those that can’t be sure of God. — They are 
so poor ! ” she added. 

“ You are right, my child ! ” returned her father. “ It was 
not my poverty — it was not being sure of God that crushed 
me. — How long is it since I was poor, Dorothy ? ” 

“ Two days, father — not two till to-morrow morning.” 

“ It looks to me two centuries. My mind is at ease, and 
I have not paid a debt yet ! How vile of me to want the 
money in my own hand, and not be content it should be in 
God’s pocket, to come out just as it was wanted ! Alas ! 
I have more faith in my uncle’s leavings than in my Father’s 
generosity ! But I must not forget gratitude in shame. 
Come, my child — no one can see us — let us kneel down here 
on the grass and pray to God who is in yon star just twink- 
ling through the gray, and in my heart and in yours, my 
child.” 

I will not give the words of the minister’s prayer. The 
words are not the prayer. Mr. Drake’s words were common- 


i 62 


PAUL FABER. 


place, with much of the conventionality and platitude of 
prayer-meetings. He had always objected to the formality 
of the Prayer-book, but the words of his own prayers without 
book were far more formal ; the prayer itself was in the 
heart, not on the lips, and was far better than the words. 
But poor Dorothy heard only the words, and they did not 
help her. They seemed rather to freeze than revive her 
faith, making her feel as if she never could believe in the 
God of her father. She was too unhappy to reason well, or 
she might have seen that she was not bound to measure God 
by the way her father talked to him — that the form of the 
prayer had to do with her father, not immediately with God 
— that God might be altogether adorable, notwithstanding 
the prayers of all heathens and of all saints. 

Their talk turned again upon the Old House of Glaston. 

If it be true, as I have heard ever since I came,” said 
Mr. Drake, “ that Lord de Barre means to pull down the 
house and plow up the garden, and if he be so short of 
money as they say, he might perhaps take a few thousands 
for it. The Lythe bounds the estate, and there makes a 
great loop, so that a portion might be cut off by a straight 
line from one arm of the curve to the other, which would 
be quite outside the park. I will set some inquiry on foot. 
I have wished for a long time to leave the river, only we 
had a lease. The Old House is nothing like so low as the 
one we are in now. Besides, as I propose, we should have 
space to build, if we found it desirable, on the level of the 
park.” 

When they reached the gate on their return, a second 
dwarfish figure, a man, pigeon-chested, short-necked, and 
asthmatic — a strange, gnome-like figure, came from the 
lodge to open it. Every body in Glaston knew Polwarth the 
gatekeeper. 

“ How is the asthma to-night, Mr. Polwarth ? ” said the 
pastor. He had not yet got rid of the tone in which in his 
young days he had been accustomed to address the poor of 
his flock — a tone half familiar, half condescending. To big 
ships barnacles will stick — and may add weeks to the length 
of a voyage too. 

“Not very bad, thank you, Mr. Drake. But, bad or not, 
it is always a friendly devil,” answered the little man. 

“ I am ast a little surprised to hear you use such 

express yourself so, Mr. Polwarth,” said the min- 
ister. 


PAUL FABER. 163 

The little man laughed a quiet, huskily melodious, gently 
merry laugh. 

“ I am not original in the idea, and scarcely so in my 
way of expressing it. I am sorry you don’t like it, Mr. 
Drake,” he said. “ I found it in the second epistle to the 
Corinthians last night, and my heart has been full of it ever 
since. It is surely no very bad sign if the truth should 
make us merry at a time ! It ought to do so, I think, seeing 
merriment is one of the lower forms of bliss.” 

“ I am at a loss to understand you, Mr. Polwarth,” said 
the minister. 

“ I beg your pardon, Mr. Drake. I will come to the 
point. In the passage I refer to St. Paul says : ‘ There 

was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan 
to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure — am 
I not right in speaking of such a demon as a friendly one ? 
He was a gift from God.” 

“ I had not observed — that is, I had not taken particular 
notice of the unusual combination of phrases in the pas- 
sage,” answered Mr. Drake. “ It is a very remarkable one, 
certainly. I remember no other in which a messenger of 
Satan is spoken of as being given by God.” 

“ Clearly, sir, St. Paul accepted him as something to be 
grateful for, so soon as his mission was explained to him ; 
and after that, who is to say what may not be a gift of 
God ! It won’t do to grumble at any thing — will it, sir ? — 
when it may so unexpectedly turn out to be given to us by 
God. I begin to suspect that never, until we see a thing 
plainly a gift of God, can we be sure that we see it right. 
I am quite certain the most unpleasant things may be such 
gifts. I should be glad enough to part with this asthma of 
mine, if it pleased God it should depart from me ; but 
would I yield a fraction of what it has brought me, for the 
best lungs in England ? I trow not ! ” 

“ You are a happy man, Mr. Polwarth — if you can say 
that and abide by it.” 

“ I am a happy man, sir. I don’t know what would come 
of me sometimes, for very gladness, if I hadn’t my good 
friend, the asthma-devil, to keep me down a bit Good 
night, sir,” he added, for Mr. Drake was already moving 
away. 

He felt superior to this man, set him down as forward, 
did not quite approve of him. Always ready to judge in- 
voluntarily from externals, he would have been shocked to 


164 


PAUL FABER. 


discover how much the deformity of the man, which caused 
him discomfort, prejudiced him also against him. Then 
Polwarth seldom went to a place of worship, and when he 
did, went to church ! A cranky, visionary, talkative man, 
he was in Mr. Drake’s eyes. He set him down as one of 
those mystical interpreters of the Word, who are always 
searching it for strange things, whose very insight leads 
them to vagary, blinding them to the relative value of things. 
It is amazing from what a mere fraction of fact concerning 
him, a man will dare judge the whole of another man. In 
reality, little Polwarth could have carried big Drake to the 
top of any hill Difficulty, up which, in his spiritual pilgrim- 
age, he had yet had to go panting and groaning — and to 
the top of many another besides, within sight even of wffiich 
the minister would never come in this world. 

“ He is too ready with his spiritual experience, that little 
man ! — too fond of airing it,” said the minister to his 
daughter. “ I don’t quite know what to make of him. He 
is a favorite with Mr. Wingfold ; but my experience makes 
me doubtful. I suspect prodigies.” 

Now Polwarth was not in the habit of airing his religious 
experiences ; but all Glaston could see that the minister 
was in trouble, and he caught at the first opportunity he 
had of showing his sympathy with him, offering him a share 
of the comfort he had just been receiving himself. He 
smiled at its apparent rejection, and closed the gate softly, 
saying to himself that the good man would think of it yet, 
he was sure. 

Dorothy took little interest in Polwarth, little therefore in 
her father’s judgment of him. But, better even than Wing- 
fold himself, that poor physical failure of a man could have 
helped her from under every gravestone that was now 
crushing the life out of her — not so much from 
superiority of intellect, certainly not from superiority 
of learning, but mainly because he was alive all through, be- 
cause the life eternal pervaded every atom of his life, every 
thought, every action. Door nor window of his being had 
a lock to it ! All of them were always on the swing to the 
wind that bloweth where it listeth. Upon occasions when 
most would seek refuge from the dark sky and gusty 
weather of trouble, by hiding from the messengers of 
Satan in the deepest cellar of their hearts, there to sit 
grumbling, Polwarth always went out into the open air. If 
the wind was rough, there was none the less life in it : the 


PAUL FABER. 


165 

breath of God, it was rough to blow the faults from him, 
genial to put fresh energy in him ; if the rain fell, it was 
the water of cleansing and growth. Misfortune he would 
not know by that name : there was no mis but in himself, 
and that the messenger of Satan was there to buffet. So 
long as God was, all was right. No wonder the minister 
then was incapable of measuring the gate-keeper ! But 
Polwarth was right about him — as he went home he pon- 
dered the passage to which he had referred him, wondering 
whether he was to regard the fortune sent him as a messen- 
ger of Satan given to buffet him. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE SURGERY DOOR. 

That Juliet loved Faber as she had at one time resolved 
never to love man, she no longer attempted to conceal from 
herself ; but she was far from being prepared to confess the 
discovery to him. His atheism she satisfactorily justified 
herself in being more ready to pity than to blame. There 
were difficulties ! There were more than difficulties ! Not 
a few of them she did not herself see how to get over ! If 
her father had been alive, then indeed ! — children must not 
break their parents’ hearts. But if, as appeared the most 
likely thing, that father, tenderly as she had loved him, was 
gone from her forever, if life was but a flash across from 
birth to the grave, why should not those who loved make 
the best of it for each other during that one moment “ brief 
as the lightning in the collied night ” ? They must try to 
be the more to one another, and the time was so short. All 
that Faber had ever pleaded was now blossoming at once in 
her thought. She had not a doubt that he loved her — as 
would have been enough once at all events. A man of 
men he was ! — noble, unselfish, independent, a ruler of him- 
self, a benefactor of his race ! What right had those believ- 
ers to speak of him as they did ? In any personal question 
he was far their superior. That they undervalued him, 
came all of their narrow prejudices ! He was not of their 
kind, therefore he must be below them ! But there v, ere first 
that should be last, and last first ! 


i66 


PAUL FABER. 


She felt herself no whit worthy of him. She believed her* 
self not for a moment comparable to him ! But his infinite 
chivalry, gentleness, compassion, would be her refuge ! 
Such a man would bear with her weaknesses, love her love, 
and forgive her sins ! If he took her God from her, he 
must take His place, and be a God-like man to her ! Then, 
if there should be any further truth discoverable, why in- 
deed, as himself said, should they not discover it together ? 
Could they be as likely to discover it apart, and distracted 
with longing ? She must think about it a little longer, 
though. She could not make up her mind the one way, 
and would not the other. She would wait and see. She 
dared not yet. Something might turn up to decide her. If 
she could but see into his heart for a moment ! 

All this later time, she had been going to church every 
Sunday, and listening to sermons in which the curate poured 
out the energy of a faith growing stronger day by day ; but 
not a word he said had as yet laid hold of one root-fiber 
of her being. She judged, she accepted, she admired, 
she refused, she condemned, but she never did. I'o many 
souls hell itself seems a less frightful alternative than the 
agony of resolve, of turning, of being born again ; but Juliet 
had never got so far as that : she had never yet looked the 
thing required of her in the face. She came herself to 
wonder that she had made any stand at all against the argu- 
ments of Faber. But how is it that any one who has been 
educated in Christianity, yet does not become the disciple 
of Jesus Christ, avoids becoming an atheist? To such the 
whole thing must look so unlike what it really is ! Does he 
prefer to keep half believing the revelation, in order to 
attribute to it elements altogether unlovely, and so justify 
himself in refusing it ? Were it not better to reject it alto- 
gether if it be not fit to be believed in ? If he be unable to 
do that, if he dare not proclaim an intellectual unbelief, if 
some reverence for father or mother, some inward drawing 
toward the good thing, some desire to keep an open door 
of escape, prevent, what a hideous folly is the moral disre- 
gard ! “ The thing is true, but I don’t mind it ! ” What is 

this acknowledged heedlessness, this apologetic arrogance ? 
Is it a timid mockery, or the putting forth of a finger in the 
very face of the Life of the world ? I know well how fool- 
ish words like these must seem to such as Faber, but for 
such they are not written ; they are written for the men and 
women who close the lids of but half-blinded eyes, and 


PAUL FABER. 


167 

think they do God service by not denying that there is not 
a sun in the heavens. There may be some denying Christ 
who shall fare better than they, when He comes to judge 
the world with a judgment which even those whom He sends 
from Him shall confess to be absolutely fair — a judgment 
whose very righteousness may be a consolation to some 
upon whom it falls heavily. 

That night Juliet hardly knew what she had said to Faber, 
and longed to see him again. She slept little, and in the morn- 
ing was weary and exhausted. But he had set her the grand 
example of placing work before every thing else, and she 
would do as he taught her. So, in the name of her lover, 
and in spite of her headache, she rose to her day’s duty. 
Love delights to put on the livery of the loved. 

After breakfast, as was their custom, Dorothy walked 
with her to the place where she gave her first lesson. The 
nearest way led past the house of the doctor ; but hith- 
erto, as often as she could frame fitting reason, generally 
on the ground that they were too early, and must make a 
little longer walk of it, Juliet had contrived to avoid turn- 
ing the corner of Mr. Drew’s shop. This day, however, 
she sought no excuse, and they went the natural road. She 
wanted to pass his house — to get a glimpse of him if she 
might. 

As they approached it, they were startled by a sudden 
noise of strife. The next instant the door of the surgery, 
which was a small building connected with the house by a 
passage, flew open, and a young man was shot out. He 
half jumped, half fell down the six or eight steps, turned at 
once, and ran up again. He had rather a refined look, not- 
withstanding the annoyance and resentment that discom- 
posed his features. The mat had caught the door and he 
was just in time to prevent it from being shut in his face. 

“ 1 will not submit to such treatment, Mr. Faber,” cried 
the youth. “ It is not the part of a gentleman to forget that 
another is one.” 

“ To the devil with yo\ir gentle fnan ! ” they heard the doc- 
tor shout in a rage, from behind the half-closed door. “ The 
less said about the gentleman the better, when the man is 
nowhere ! ” 

“ Mr. Faber, I will allow no man to insult me,” said the 
youth, and made a fierce attempt to push the door open. 

“ You are a wretch below insult,” returned the doctor ; 
and the next moment the youth staggered again down the 


i68 


PAUL FABER. 


steps, this time to fall, in awkward and ignominious fashion, 
half on the pavement, half in the road. 

Then out on the top of the steps came Paul Faber, white 
with wrath, too full of indignation to see person or thing 
except the object of it. 

“ You damned rascal ! ” he cried. “ If you set foot on 
my premises again, it will be at the risk of your contempti- 
ble life.” 

“ Come, come, Mr. Faber ! this won’t do,” returned the 
youth, defiantly, as he gathered himself up. “ I don’t want 
to make a row, but — ” 

“ You don’t want to make a row, you puppy ! Then / 
do. You don’t come into my house again. I’ll have your 
traps turned out to you. — Jenkins ! — You had better leave 
the town as fast as you can, too, for this won’t be a secret.” 

“ You’ll allow me to call on Mr. Crispin first ? ” 

“ Do. Tell him the truth, and see whether he’ll take the 
thing up ! If I were God, I’d damn you ! ” 

“ Big words from you, Faber ! ” said the youth with a 
sneer, struggling hard to keep the advantage he had in 
temper. “ Every body knows you don’t believe there is any 
God.” 

Then there ought to be, so long as such as you ’ain’t 
got your deserts. You set up for a doctor ! I would sooner 
lose all the practice I ever made than send you to visit 
woman or child, you heartless miscreant ! ” 

The epithet the doctor really used here was stronger and 
more contemptuous, but it is better to take the liberty of 
substituting this. 

“ What have I done then to let loose all this Billings- 
gate?” cried the young man. indignantly. “I have done 
nothing the most distinguished in the profession haven’t 
done twenty times over.” 

“ I don’t care a damn. What’s the profession to hu- 
manity ! For a wonder the public is in the right on this 
question, and I side with the public. The profession may 
go to — Turkey ! ” — Probably Turkey was not the place he 
had intended to specify, but at the moment he caught sight 
of Juliet and her companion. — “There!” he concluded, 
pointing to the door behind him, “you go in and put your 
things up — and be off," 

Without another word, the young man ascended the steps, 
and entered the house. 

Juliet stood staring, motionless and white. Again and 


PAUL FABER. 


169 

again Dorothy would have turned back, but Juliet grasped 
her by the arm, stood as if frozen to the spot, and would 
not let her move. She 7nust know what it meant. And all 
the time a little crowd had been gathering, as it well might, 
even in a town no bigger than Glaston, at such uproar in 
its usually so quiet streets. At first it was all women, who 
showed their interest by a fixed regard of each speaker in 
the quarrel in turn, and a confused staring from one to the 
other of themselves. No handle was yet visible by which 
to lay hold of the affair. But the moment the young man 
re-entered the surgery, and just as Faber was turning to go 
after him, out, like a bolt, shot from the open door a long- 
legged, gaunt mongrel dog, in such a pitiful state as I will 
not horrify my readers by attempting to describe. It is 
enough to say that the knife had been used upon him with 
a ghastly freedom. In an agony of soundless terror the 
poor animal, who could never recover the usage he had had, 
and seemed likely to tear from himself a part of his body at 
every bound, rushed through the spectators, who scattered 
horror-stricken from his path. Ah, what a wild waste look 
the creature had ! — as if his spirit within him were wan with 
dismay at the lawless invasion of his humble house of life. 
A cry, almost a shriek, rose from the little crowd, to which 
a few men had now added themselves. The doctor came 
dashing down the steps in pursuit of him. The same in- 
stant, having just escaped collision with the dog, up came 
Mr. Drew. His round face flamed like the sun in a fog 
with anger and pity and indignation. He rushed straight 
at the doctor, and would have collared him. Faber flung 
him from him without a word, and ran on. The draper 
reeled, but recovered himself, and was starting to follow, 
when Juliet, hurrying up, with white face and flashing eyes, 
laid her hand on his arm, and said, in a voice of whose 
authoritative tone she was herself unconscious, 

“ Stop, Mr. Drew.” 

The draper obeyed, but stood speechless with anger, not 
yet doubting it was the doctor who had so misused the dog. 

“ I have been here from the first,” she went on. “ Mr. 
Faber is as angry as you are. — Please, Dorothy, will you 
come ? — It is that assistant of his, Mr. Drew ! He hasn’t 
been with him more than three days.” 

With Dorothy beside her, Juliet now told him, loud 
enough for all to hear, what they had heard and seen. 

“ I must go and beg his pardon,” said the draper. “ I 


170 


PAUL FABER. 


had no right to come to such a hasty conclusion. I hope 
he will not find it hard to forgive me.” 

“You did no more than he would have done in your 
place,” replied Juliet. “ — But,” she added, “where is the 
God of that poor animal, Mr. Drew ? ” 

“ I expect He’s taken him by this time,” answered the 
draper. “ But I must go and find the doctor.” 

So saying, he turned and left them. The ladies went 
also, and the crowd dispersed. But already rumors, as 
evil as discordant, were abroad in Glaston to the prejudice 
of Faber, and at the door of his godlessness was from all 
sides laid the charge of cruelty. 

How difficult it is to make prevalent the right notion of 
any thing ! But only a little reflection is required to explain 
the fact. The cause is, that so few people give themselves 
the smallest trouble to understand what is told them. The 
first thing suggested by the words spoken is taken instead 
of the fact itself, and to that as a ground-plan all that follows 
is fitted. People listen so badly, even when not sleepily, 
that the wonder is any thing of consequence should ever be 
even approximately understood. How appalling it would 
be to one anxious to convey a meaning, to see the shapes 
his words assumed in the mind of his listening friend ! For, 
in place of falling upon the table of his perception, kept 
steady by will and judgment, he would see them tumble 
upon the sounding-board of his imagination, ever vibrating, 
and there be danced like sand into all manner of shapes, 
according to the tune played by the capricious instrument. 
Thus, in Glaston, the strangest stories of barbarity and 
cruelty were now attributed to a man entirely incapable of 
them. He was not one of the foul seekers after knowledge, 
and if he had had a presentiment of the natural tendency 
of his opinions, he would have trembled at the vision, and 
set himself to discover whether there might not be truth in 
another way of things. 

As he went about in the afternoon amongst his sick and 
needy, the curate heard several of these ill reports. Some 
communicated them to ease their own horror, others in the 
notion of pleasing the believer by revolting news of the un- 
believer. In one house he was told that the poor young 
man whom Dr. Faber had enticed to be his assistant, had 
behaved in the most gentlemanly fashion, had thrown up 
his situation, consenting to the loss of his salary, rather than 
connive at the horrors of cruelty in which the doctor claimed 


PAUL FABER. 


17I 

his help. Great moan was made over the pity that such a 
nice man should be given to such abominations ; but where 
was the wonder, some said, seeing he was the enemy of God, 
that he should be the enemy of the beasts God had made ? 
Much truth, and many wise reflections were uttered, only 
they were not “ as level as the cannon to his blank,” for they 
were pointed at the wrong man. 

There was one thing in which Wingfold differed from 
most of his parishioners : he could hear with his judgment, 
and make his imagination lie still. At the same time, in 
order to arrive the more certainly at the truth, in any matter 
presented to him, he would, in general, listen to the end of 
what any body had to say. So doing he let eagerness ex- 
haust itself, and did not by opposition in the first heat of 
narration, excite partisan interest, or wake malevolent 
caution. If the communication was worthy, he thus got all 
the worth of it ; if it was evil, he saw to the bottom of it, 
and discovered, if such were there, the filthy reptile in the 
mud beneath, which was setting the whole ugly pool in com- 
motion. By this deliberateness he also gave the greater 
weight to what answer he saw fit to give at last — sometimes 
with the result of considerable confusion of face to the nar- 
rator. In the present instance, he contented himself with 
the strongest assurance that the whole story was a mistake 
so far as it applied to Mr. Faber, who had, in fact, dismissed 
his assistant for the very crime of which they accused him- 
self. The next afternoon, he walked the whole length of 
Pine street with the doctor, conversing all the way. 

Nor did he fail to turn the thing to advantage. He had 
for some time been awaiting a fit opportunity for instructing 
his people upon a point which he thought greatly neglected : 
here was the opportunity, and he made haste to avail him- 
self of it. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE GROANS OF THE INARTICULATE. 

The rest of the week was rainy, but Sunday rose , a day 
of perfect summer. As the curate went up the pulpit-stair, 
he felt as if the pulse of all creation were beating in unison 


172 


PAUL FABER. 


with his own ; for fo-day he was the speaker for the speech- 
less, the interpreter of groans to the creation of God. 

He read, Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and 
one of them shall 7iot fall 07i the grou7id without your Father^ 
and said : 

“ My friends, doth God care for sparrows ? Or saith He 
it altogether for our sakes, and not at all for the sparrows ? 
No, truly ; for indeed it would be nothing to us if it were 
not every thing to the sparrows. The word can not reach 
our door except through the sparrow's nest. For see ! 
what comfort would it be to us to be told we were of more 
value than ever so many sparrows, if their value was noth- 
ing — if God only knew and did not care for them ? The 
saying would but import that ’we were of more value than 
just nothing. Oh, how skillful is unbelief to take all the 
color and all the sweetness and all the power out of the 
words of The Word Himself ! How many Christians are 
there not who take the passage to mean that not a sparrow 
can fall to the ground without the knowledge of its Creator ! 
A mighty thing that for the sparrow ! If such a Christian 
seemed to the sparrow the lawful interpreter of the spar- 
row’s Creator, he would make an infidel of the sparrow. 
What Christ-like heart, what heart of loving man, could 
be content to take all the comfort to itself, and leave none 
for the sparrows ? Not that of our mighty brother Paul. 
In his ears sounded, in his heart echoed, the cries of all the 
creation of God. Their groanings that could not be 
uttered, roused the response of his great compassion. 
When Christ was born in the heart of Paul, the whole crea- 
tion of God was born with him ; nothing that could feel 
could he help loving ; in the trouble of the creatures’ trou- 
bles, sprang to life in his heart the hope, that all that could 
groan should yet rejoice, that on the lowest servant in the 
house should yet descend the fringe of the robe that was 
cast about the redeemed body of the Son. He was no 
pettifogging priest standing up for the rights of the 
superior ! An exclusive is a self-excluded Christian. They 
that shut the door will find themselves on the wrong side of 
the door they have shut. They that push with the horn 
and stamp with the hoof, can not be admitted to the fold. 
St. Paul would acknowledge no distinctions. He saw every 
wall — of seclusion, of exclusion, of partition, broken down. 
Jew and Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free — all 
must come in to his heart. Mankind was not enough to fill 


PAUL FABER. 


173 


that divine space, enlarged to infinitude by the presence of 
the Christ : angels, principalities, and powers, must share in 
its conscious splendor. Not yet filled, yet unsatisfied with 
beings to love, Paul spread forth his arms to the whole 
groaning and troubled race of animals. Whatever could 
send forth a sigh of discomfort, or heave a helpless limb in 
pain, he took to the bosom of his hope and affection — yea, 
of his love and faith : on them, too, he saw the cup of 
Christ’s heart overflow. For Paul had heard, if not from 
His own, yet from the lips of them that heard Him speak, 
the words. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and 
not one of them is forgotten before God ? What if the little 
half-farthing things bear their share, and always have borne, 
in that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ ? In any 
case, not one of them, not one so young that it topples 
from the edge of its nest, unable to fly, is forgotten by the 
Father of men. It shall not have a lonely deathbed, for the 
Father of Jesus will be with it. It must be true. It is 
indeed a daring word, but less would not be enough for the 
hearts of men, for the glory of God, for the need of the 
sparrow. I do not close my eyes to one of a thousand 
seemingly contradictory facts. I misdoubt my reading of 
the small-print notes, and appeal to the text, yea, beyond 
the text, even to the God of the sparrows Himself. 

“ I count it as belonging to the smallness of our faith, to 
the poorness of our religion, to the rudimentary condition 
of our nature, that our sympathy with God’s creatures is so 
small. Whatever the narrowness of our poverty-stricken, 
threadbare theories concerning them, whatever the inhospi- 
tality and exclusiveness of our mean pride toward them, 
we can not escape admitting that to them pain is pain, and 
comfort is comfort ; that they hunger and thirst ; that sleep 
restores and death delivers them : surely these are ground 
enough to the true heart wherefore it should love and 
cherish them — the heart at least that believes with St. Paul, 
that they need and have the salvation of Christ as well as 
we. Right grievously, though blindly, do they groan 
after it. 

“ The ignorance and pride which is forever sinking us 
toward them, are the very elements in us which mislead us 
in our judgment concerning them, causing us to imagine 
them not upon a lower merely, but upon an altogether dif- 
ferent footing in creation from our own. The same things 
we call by one name in us, and by another in them. How 


174 


PAUL FABER. 


jealous have not men been as to allowing them any share 
worthy the name of reason ! But you may see a greater 
difference in this respect between the lowest and the high- 
est at a common school, than you will between them and 
us. A pony that has taught itself without hands to pump 
water for its thirst, an elephant that puts forth its mighty 
lip to lift the moving wheel of the heavy wagon over the 
body of its fallen driver, has rather more to plead on the 
score of intellect than many a schoolboy. Not a few of 
them shed tears. A bishop, one of the foremost of our 
scholars, assured me that once he saw a certain animal 
laugh while playing off a practical joke on another of a dif- 
ferent kind from himself. I do not mention the kind of 
animal, because it would give occasion for a silly articulate 
joke, far inferior to his practical one. I go further, and say, 
that I more than suspect a rudimentary conscience in every 
animal. I care not how remotely rudimentary. There 
must be in the moral world absolute and right potent ger- 
minal facts which lie infinitudes beyond the reach of any 
moral microscope, as in the natural world beyond the most 
powerful of lenses. Yet surely in this respect also, one may 
see betwixt boys at the same school greater differences than 
there are betwixt the highest of the animals and the lowest 
of the humans. If you plead for time for the boy to develop 
his poor rudimentary mollusk of a conscience, take it and 
heartily welcome — but grant it the animals also. With 
some of them it may need millions of years for any thing I 
know. Certainly in many human beings it never comes 
plainly into our ken all the time they walk the earth. Who 
shall say how far the vision of the apostle reached ? but 
surely the hope in which he says God Himself subjected the 
creature to vanity, must have been an infinite hope : I will 
hope infinitely. That the Bible gives any ground for the 
general fancy that at death an animal ceases to exist, is but 
the merest dullest assumption. Neither is there a single 
scientific argument, so far as I know, against the continued 
existence of the animals, which would not tell equally 
against human immortality. My hope is, that in some way, 
concerning which I do not now choose to speculate, there 
may be progress, growth, for them also. While I believe 
for myself, I must hope for them. This much at least seems 
clear — and I could press the argument further : if not one 
of them is forgotten before God — and one of them yet 
passes out of being — then is God the God of the dead and 


PAUL FABER. 


175 


not of the living ! But we praise Thee, we bless Thee, we 
worship Thee, we glorify Thee, we give thanks to Thee for 
Thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the 
Father almighty ! Thy universe is life, life and not death. 
Even the death which awoke in the bosom of Sin, Thy Son, 
opposing Himself to its hate, and letting it spend its fury 
upon Him, hath abolished. I know nothing, therefore care 
little, as to whether or not it may have pleased God to bring 
man up to the hill of humanity through the swamps and 
thickets of lower animal nature, but I do care that I should 
not now any more approach that level, whether once 
rightly my own or not. For what is honor in the animals, 
would be dishonor in me. Not the less may such be the 
punishment, perhaps redemption, in store for some men and 
women. For aught I know, or see unworthy in the thought, 
the self-sufficing exquisite, for instance, may one day find 
himself chattering amongst fellow apes in some monkey- 
village of Africa or Burmah. Nor is the supposition 
absurd, though at first sight it may well so appear. Let us 
remember that we carry in us the characteristics of each and 
every animal. There is not one fiercest passion, one move- 
ment of affection, one trait of animal economy, one quality 
either for praise or blame, existing in them that does not 
exist in us. The relationship can not be so very distant. 
And if theirs be so freely in us, why deny them so much we 
call ours ? Hear how one of the ablest doctors of the 
English church, John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s in the 
reign of James the first, writes : — 

Man is a lump where all beasts kneaded be ; 

Wisdom makes him an ark where all agree ; 

The fool, in whom these beasts do live at jar, 

Is sport to others, and a theater ; 

Nor scapes he so, but is himself their prey ; 

All which was man in him, is eat away ; 

And now his beasts on one another feed, 

Yet couple in anger, and new monsters breed. 

How happy’s he which hath due place assigned 
To his beasts, and disaforested his mind ! 

Impaled himself to keep them out, pot in 5 

Can sow, and dares trust corn wher^ they have beep ; 

Can use his horse, goat, wolf, pnd every beast, 

And is not ass himself to all the rest 1 
Else man not only is the herd of swine. 

But he’s those devils, too, which did incline 
Them to an headlong rage, and made them worse ; 

For call ^dd weight to, heaven’s heaviest curse. 


176 


PAUL FABER. 


“ It astonishes me, friends, that we are not more terrified 
at ourselves. Except the living Father have brought order, 
harmony, a world, out of His chaos, a man is but a cage of 
unclean beasts, with no one to rule them, however fine a 
gentleman he may think himself. Even in this fair, well- 
ordered England of ours, at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, was 
discovered, some fifty years ago, a great cavern that had 
once been a nest of gigantic hyenas, evidenced by their 
own broken bones, and the crushed bones of tigers, ele- 
phants, bears, and many other creatures. See to what a 
lovely peace the Creating Hand has even now brought our 
England, far as she is yet from being a province in the 
kingdom of Heaven ; but see also in her former condition a 
type of the horror to which our souls may festering sink, if 
we shut out His free spirit, and have it no more moving 
upon the face of our waters. And when I say a type, let us 
be assured there is no type worth the name which is not poor 
to express the glory or the horror it represents. 

“ To return to the animals : they are a care to God ! they 
occupy part of His thoughts ; we have duties toward them, 
owe them friendliness, tenderness. That God should see us 
use them as we do is a terrible fact — a severe difficulty to 
faith. For to such a pass has the worship of Knowledge — 
an idol vile even as Mammon himself, and more cruel — 
arrived, that its priests, men kind as other men to their own 
children, kind to the animals of their household, kind even 
to some of the wild animals, men who will scatter crumbs 
to the robins in winter, and set water for the sparrows on 
their house-top in summer, will yet, in the worship of this 
their idol, in their greed after the hidden things of the life 
of the flesh, without scruple, confessedly without compunc- 
tion, will, I say, dead to the natural motions of the divine 
element in them, the inherited pity of God, subject inno- 
cent, helpless, appealing, dumb souls to such tortures whose 
bare description would justly set me forth to the blame of cru- 
elty toward those who sat listening to the same. Have these 
living, moving, seeing, hearing, feeling creatures, who could 
not be but by the will and the presence of Another any more 
than ourselves — have they no rights in this their compelled 
existence ? Does the most earnest worship of an idol ex- 
cuse robbery with violence extreme to obtain the sacrifices 
he loves ? Does the value of the thing that may be found 
there justify me in breaking into the house of another’s life ? 
Does his ignorance of the existence of that which I seek 


PAUL FABER. 


177 


alter the case ? Can it be right to water the tree of knowl- 
edge with blood, and stir its boughs with the gusts of bitter 
agony, that we may force its flowers into blossom before 
their time ? Sweetly human must be the delights of knowl- 
edge so gained ! grand in themselves, and ennobling in their 
tendencies ! Will it justify the same as a noble, a laudable, 
a worshipful endeavor to cover it with the reason or pretext 
— God knows which — of such love for my own human kind 
as strengthens me to the most ruthless torture of their poorer 
relations, whose little treasure I would tear from them that 
it may teach me how to add to their wealth ? May my God 
give me grace to prefer a hundred deaths to a life gained by 
the suffering of one simplest creature. He holds his life as 
I hold mine by finding himself there where I find myself. 
Shall I quiet my heart with the throbs of another heart ? 
soothe my nerves with the agonized tension of a system ? 
live a few days longer by a century of shrieking deaths ? It 
were a hellish wrong, a selfish, hateful, violent injustice. An 
evil life it were that I gained or held by such foul means ! 
How could I even attempt to justify the injury, save on the 
plea that I am already better and more valuable than he ; 
that I am the stronger ; that the possession of all the 
pleasures of human intelligence gives me the right to turn 
the poor innocent joys of his senses into pains before which, 
threatening my own person, my very soul would grow gray 
with fear ? Or let me grant what many professional men 
deny utterly, that some knowledge of what is called practical 
value to the race has been thus attained — what can be its 
results at best but the adding of a cubit to the life ? Grant 
that it gave us an immortal earthly existence, one so happy 
that the most sensual would never wish for death : what 
would it be by such means to live forever ? God in Heaven ! 
who, what is the man who would dare live a life wrung from 
the agonies of tortured innocents ? Against the will of my 
Maker, live by means that are an abhorrence to His soul ! 
Such a life must be all in the flesh ! the spirit could have 
little share therein. Could it be even a life of the flesh that 
came of treason committed against essential animality ? It 
could be but an abnormal monstrous existence, that sprang, 
toadstool-like, from the blood-marsh of cruelty — a life 
neither spiritual nor fieshey, but devilish. 

“ It is true we are above the creatures — but not to keep 
them down ; they are for our use and service, but neither to 
be trodden under the foot of pride, nor misused as ministers. 


178 


PAUL FABER. 


at their worst cost of suffering, to our inordinate desires of 
ease. After no such fashion did God give them to be our 
helpers in living. To be tortured that we might gather ease ! 
none but a devil could have made them for that ! When I 
see a man who professes to believe not only in a God, but 
such a God as holds His court in the person of Jesus Christ, 
assail with miserable cruelty the scanty, lovely, timorous 
lives of the helpless about him, it sets my soul aflame with 
such indignant wrath, with such a sense of horrible incon- 
gruity and wrong to every harmony of Nature, human and 
divine, that I have to make haste and rush to the feet of the 
Master, lest I should scorn and hate where He has told me 
to love. Such a wretch, not content that Christ should have 
died to save men, will tear Christ’s living things into palpi- 
tating shreds, that he may discover from them how better to 
save the same men. Is this to be in the world as He was in 
the world ! Picture to yourselves one of these Christian 
inquirers erect before his class of students : knife in hand, 
he is demonstrating to them from the live animal, so fixed 
and screwed and wired that he cannot find for his agony even 
the poor relief of a yelp, how this or that writhing nerve or 
twitching muscle operates in the business of a life which 
his demonstration has turned from the gift of love into a 
poisoned curse ; picture to yourself such a one so busied, 
suddenly raising his eyes and seeing the eyes that see him ! 
the eyes of Him who, when He hung upon the cross, knew 
that He suffered for the whole creation of His Father, to 
lift it out of darkness into light, out of wallowing chaos into 
order and peace ! Those eyes watching him, that pierced 
hand soothing his victim, would not the knife fall from his 
hand in the divine paralysis that shoots from the heart and 
conscience ? Ah me ! to have those eyes upon me in any 
wrong-doing ! One thing only could be worse — not to have 
them upon me — to be left with my devils. 

“ You all know the immediate cause of the turning of our 
thoughts in this direction — the sad case of cruelty that so 
unexpectedly rushed to light in Glaston. So shocked was 
the man in whose house it took place that, as he drove from 
his door the unhappy youth who was guilty of the crime, 
this testimony, in the righteous indignation of his soul, be- 
lieving, as you are aware, in no God and Father of all, broke 
from him with curses — ‘ There ought to be a God to punish 
such cruelty.’ — ‘ Begone,’ he said. ‘ Never would I commit 
woman or child into the hands of a willful author of suffering.’ 


PAUL FABER. 


179 


“ We are to rule over the animals ; the opposite of rule 
is torture, the final culmination of anarchy. We slay them, 
and if with reason, then with right. Therein we do them 
no wrong. Yourselves will bear me witness however and 
always in this place, I have protested that death is no evil, 
save as the element of injustice may be mingled therein. 
The sting of death is sin. Death, righteously inflicted, I 
repeat, is the reverse of an injury. 

“ What if there is too much lavishment of human affec- 
tion upon objects less than human ! it hurts less than if 
there were none. I confess that it moves with strange dis- 
comfort one who has looked upon swarms of motherless 
children, to see in a childless house a ruined dog, overfed, 
and snarling with discomfort even on the blessed throne of 
childhood, the lap of a woman. But even that is better 
than that the woman should love no creature at all — infin- 
itely better ! It may be she loves as she can. Her heart 
may not yet be equal to the love of a child, may be able 
only to cherish a creature whose oppositions are merely 
amusing, and whose presence, as doubtless it seems to her, 
gives rise to no responsibilities. Let her love her dog — even 
although her foolish treatment of him should delay the poor 
animal in its slow trot towards canine perfection : she may 
come to love him better ; she may herself through him 
advance to the love and the saving of a child — who can 
tell ? But do not mistake me ; there are women with hearts 
so divinely insatiable in loving, that in the mere gaps of their 
untiring ministration of humanity, they will fondle any liv- 
ing thing capable of receiving the overflow of their affec- 
tion. Let such love as they will ; they can hardly err. It 
is not of such that I have spoken. 

“ Again, to how many a lonely woman is not life made 
endurable, even pleasant, by the possession and the love of 
a devoted dog ! The man who would focus the burning 
glass of science upon the animal, may well mock at such a 
mission, and speak words contemptuous of the yellow old 
maid with her yellow ribbons and her yellow dog. Nor 
would it change his countenance or soften his heart to be 
assured that that withered husk of womanhood was lovely 
once, and the heart in it is loving still ; that she was reduced 
to all but misery by the self-indulgence of a brother, to 
whom the desolation of a sister was but a pebble to pave 
the way to his pleasures ; that there is no one left her now 
to love, or to be grateful for her love, but the creature 


i8o 


PAUL FABER. 


which he regards merely as a box of nature’s secrets, worthy 
only of being rudely ransacked for what it may contain, and 
thrown aside when shattered in the search. A box he is 
indeed, in which lies inclosed a shining secret ! — a truth too 
radiant for the eyes of such a man as he ; the love of a liv- 
ing God is in him and his fellows, ranging the world in 
broken incarnation, ministering to forlorn humanity in 
dumb yet divine service. Who knows, in their great silence, 
how germane with ours may not be their share in the groan- 
ings that can not be uttered ! 

“ Friends, there must be a hell. If we leave scripture 
and human belief aside, science reveals to us that nature has 
her catastrophes — that there is just so much of the failed 
cycle, of the unrecovered, the unbalanced, the incompleted, 
the fallen-short, in her motions, that the result must be col- 
lision, shattering resumption, the rage of unspeakable fire. 
Our world and all the worlds of the system, are, I suppose, 
doomed to fall back at length into their parent furnace. 
Then will come one end and another beginning. There is 
many an end and many a beginning. At one of those ends, 
and that not the furthest, must surely lie a hell, in which, of 
all sins, the sin of cruelty, under whatever pretext commit- 
ted, will receive its meed from Him with whom there is no 
respect of persons, but v/ho giveth to every man according 
to his works. Nor will it avail him to plead that in life he 
never believed in such retribution ; for a cruelty that would 
have been restrained by a fear of hell was none the less 
hellworthy. 

“ But I will not follow this track. The general convic- 
tion of humanity will be found right against any conclus- 
ions calling themselves scientific, that go beyond the scope 
or the reach of science. Neither will I presume to suggest 
the operation of any lex talionis in respect of cruelty. I 
know little concerning the salvation by fire of which St. Paul 
writes in his first epistle to the Corinthians ; but I say this, 
that if the difficulty of curing cruelty be commensurate with 
the horror of its nature, then verily for the cruel must the 
furnace of wrath be seven times heated. Ah ! for them, 
poor injured ones, the wrong passes away ! Friendly, 
lovely death, the midwife of Heaven, comes to their relief, 
and their pain sinks in precious peace. But what is to be 
done for our brother’s soul, bespattered with the gore of 
innocence? Shall the cries and moans of the torture 
he inflicted haunt him like an evil smell ? Shall 


PAUL FABER. 


l8l 


the phantoms of exquisite and sickening pains float 
lambent about the fingers, and pass and repass 
through the heart and brain, that sent their realities quiver- 
ing and burning into the souls of the speechless ones ? It 
has been said somewhere that the hell for the cruel man 
would be to have the faces of all the creatures he had 
wronged come staring round him, with sad, weary eyes. 
But must not the divine nature, the pitiful heart of the 
universe, have already begun to reassert itself in him, 
before that would hurt him ? Upon such a man the justice 
in my heart desires this retribution — to desire more would 
be to be more vile than he ; to desire less would not be to 
love my brother ; — that the soul capable of such deeds 
shall be compelled to know the nature of its deeds in the 
light of the absolute Truth — that the eternal fact shall flame 
out from the divine region of its own conscience until it 
writhe in the shame of being itself, loathe as absolute hor- 
ror the deeds which it would now justify, and long for 
deliverance from that which it has made of itself. The 
moment the discipline begins to blossom, the moment the 
man begins to thirst after confession and reparation, then is 
he once more my brother ; then from an object of disgust 
in spite of pity, he becomes a being for all tender, honest 
hearts in the universe of God to love, cherish, revere. 

“ Meantime, you who behold with aching hearts the 
wrongs done to the lower brethren that ought to be cher- 
ished as those to whom less has been given, having done 
all, stand comforted in the thought that not one of them 
suffers without the loving, caring, sustaining presence of 
the great Father of the universe, the Father of men, the 
God and Father of Jesus Christ, the God of the sparrows 
and the ravens and the oxen — yea, of the lilies of the 
field.” 

As might be expected, Mrs. Ramshorn was indignant. 
What right had he to desecrate a pulpit of the Church of 
England by misusing it for the publication of his foolish 
fancies about creatures that had not reason ! Of course 
nobody would think of being cruel to them, poor things ! 
But there was that silly man talking about them as if they 
were better Christians than any of them ! He was intrud- 
ing into things he had not seen, vainly puffed up by his 
fleshly mind. 

The last portion of these remarks she made in the hear- 
ing of her niece, who carried it home for the amusement of 


i 82 


PAUL FABER. 


her husband. He said he could laugh with a good con- 
science, for the reading of the passage, according to the 
oldest manuscripts we have, was not “ the things he hath 
not seen,” but “the things he hath seen,” and he 
thought it meant — haunting the visible, the sensuous, 
the fleshly, so, for the satisfaction of an earthly 
imagination, in love with embodiment for its own sake, 
worshiping angels, and not keeping hold of the invisible, 
the real, the true — the mind, namely, and spirit of the living 
Christ, the Head. 

“ Poor auntie,” replied Helen, “ would hold herself quite 
above the manuscripts. With her it is the merest sectarian- 
ism and radicalism to meddle with the text as appointed to 
be read in churches. What was good enough for the dean, 
must be far more than good enough for an unbeneficed 
curate ! ” 

But the rector, who loved dogs and horses, was delighted 
with the sermon. 

Faber’s whole carriage and conduct in regard to the 
painful matter was such as to add to Juliet’s confidence in 
him. Somehow she grew more at ease in his company, and 
no longer took pains to avoid him. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

COW-LANE-CHAPEL. 

By degrees Mr. Drake’s mind grew quiet, and accommo- 
dated itself to the condition of the new atmosphere in which 
at first it was so hard for him to draw spiritual breath. He 
found himself again able to pray, and while he bowed his 
head lower before God, he lifted up his heart higher toward 
him. His uncle’s bequest presenting no appropriative difficul- 
ties, he at once set himself to be a faithful and wise steward 
of the grace of God, to which holy activity the return of his 
peace was mainly owing. Now and then the fear would 
return that God had sent him the money in displeasure, that 
He had handed him over all his principal, and refused to be 
his banker any more ; and the light-winged, haunting dread 
took from him a little even of the blameless pleasure that 


PAUL FABER. 


183 

naturally belonged to the paying of his debts. Also he now 
became plainly aware of a sore fact which he had all 
his life dimly suspected — namely, that there was in his 
nature a spot of the leprosy of avarice, the desire to accumu- 
late. Hence he grew almost afraid of his money, and his 
anxiety to spend it freely and right, to keep it flowing lest 
it should pile up its waves and drown his heart, went on 
steadily increasing. That he could hoard now if he pleased 
gave him just the opportunity of burning the very possibility 
out of his soul. It is those who are unaware of their pro- 
clivities, and never pray against them, that must be led into 
temptation, lest they should forever continue capable of evil. 
When a man could do a thing, then first can he abstain from 
doing it. Now, with his experience of both poverty and 
riches, the minister knew that he must make them both fol- 
low like hounds at his heel. If he were not to love money, 
if, even in the free use of it, he were to regard it with honor, 
fear its loss, forget that it came from God, and must return 
to God through holy channels, he must sink into a purely 
contemptible slave. Where would be the room for any fur- 
ther repentance ? He would have had every chance, and 
failed in every trial the most opposed ! He must be lord of 
his wealth ; Mammon must be the slave, not Walter Drake. 
Mammon must be more than his brownie, more than his 
Robin Goodfellow ; he must be, the subject Djin of a holy 
spell — holier than Solomon’s wisdom, more potent than the 
stamp of his seal. At present he almost feared him as a 
Caliban to whom he might not be able to play Prospero, an 
Ufreet half -escaped from his jar, a demon he had raised, for 
whom he must find work, or be torn by him into fragments. 
The slave must have drudgery, and the master must take 
heed that he never send him alone to do love’s dear 
service. 

“ I am sixty,’’ he said to himself, “ and I have learned to 
begin to learn.” Behind him his public life looked a mere 
tale that is told ; his faith in the things he had taught had 
been little better than that which hangs about an ancient 
legend. He had been in a measure truthful ; he had 
endeavored to act upon what he taught ; but alas ! the 
accidents of faith had so often been uppermost with him, 
instead of its eternal fundamental truths ! How unlike the 
affairs of the kingdom did all that church-business look to 
him now ! — the rich men ruling — the poor men grumbling ! 
In the whole assembly including himself, could he honestly 


184 


PAUL FABER. 


say he knew more than one man that sought the kingdom 
of Heaven first 1 And yet he had been tolerably content, 
until they began to turn against himself ! — What better could 
they have done than get rid of him ? The whole history of 
their relation appeared now as a mess of untruth shot 
through with threads of light. Now, now, he would strive 
to enter in at the strait gate : the question was not of 
pushing others in. He would mortify the spirit of worldly 
judgments and ambitions : he would be humble as the serv- 
ant of Christ. 

Dorothy’s heart was relieved a little. She could read her 
father’s feelings better than most wives those of their hus- 
bands, and she knew he was happier. But she was not her- 
self happier. She would gladly have parted with all the 
money for a word from any quarter that could have assured 
her there was a God in Heaven who loved. But the teaching 
of the curate had begun to tell upon her. She had begun 
to have a faint perception that if the story of Jesus Christ 
was true, there might be a Father to be loved, and being 
might be a bliss. The poorest glimmer of His loveliness 
gives a dawn to our belief in a God ; and a small amount 
indeed of a genuine knowledge of Him will serve to neutral- 
ize the most confident declaration that science is against 
the idea of a God — an utterance absolutely false. Scientific 
men may be unbelievers, but it is not from the teaching of 
science. Science teaches that a man must not say he knows 
what he does not know ; not that what a man does not 
know he may say does not exist. I will grant, however, 
and willingly, that true science is against Faber’s idea of 
other people’s idea of a God. I will grant also that the 
tendency of one who exclusively studies science is certainly 
to deny what no one has proved, and he is uninterested in 
proving ; but that is the fault of the man and his lack of 
science, not of the science he has. If people understood 
better the arrogance of which they are themselves guilty, 
they would be less ready to imagine that a strong assertion 
necessarily implies knowledge. Nothing can be known 
except what is true. A negative may be fact, but can not 
be known except by the knowledge of its opposite. I believe 
also that nothing can be really believed, except it be true. 
But people think they believe many things which they do not 
and can not in the real sense. 

When, however, Dorothy came to concern herself about 
the will of God, in trying to help her father to do the best 


PAUL FABER. 


185 

with their money, she began to reap a little genuine comfort, 
for then she found things begin to explain themselves a little. 
The more a man occupies himself in doing the works of the 
Father — the sort of thing the Father does, the easier will 
he find it to believe that such a Father is at work in the 
world. 

In the curate Mr. Drake had found not only a man he 
could trust, but one to whom, young as he was, he could 
look up ; and it was a trait in the minister nothing short of 
noble, that he did look up to the curate — perhaps without 
knowing it. He had by this time all but lost sight of the 
fact, ■)nce so monstrous, so unchristian in his eyes, that he 
was the paid agent of a government-church ; the sight of 
the man’s own house, built on a rock in which was a well of 
the water of life, had made him nearly forget it. In his 
turn he could give the curate much ; the latter soon discov- 
ered that he knew a great deal more about Old Testament 
criticism, church-history, and theology — understanding by 
the last the records of what men had believed and argued 
about God — than he did. They often disagreed and not sel- 
dom disputed ; but while each held the will and law of 
Christ as the very foundation of the world, and obedience 
to Flim as the way to possess it after its idea, how could they 
fail to know that they were brothers? They were gentle 
with each other for the love of Him whom in eager obedi- 
ence they called Lord. 

The moment his property was his availably, the minister 
betook himself to the curate. 

“ Now,” he said — he too had the gift of going pretty 
straight, though not quite so straight as the curate — “ Now, 
Mr. Wingfold, tell me plainly what you think the first thing 
I ought to do with this money toward making it a true gift 
of God. I mean, what can I do with it for somebody else — 
some person or persons to whom money in my hands, not 
in theirs, may become a small saviour ? ” 

“ You want, in respect of your money,’' rejoined the 
curate, “ to be in the world as Christ was in the world, 
setting right what is wrong in ways possible to you, and not 
counteracting His? You want to do the gospel as well as 
preach it ? ” 

“ That is what I mean — or rather what I wish to mean. 
You have said it. — What do you count the first thing I 
should try to set right ? ” 

“ I should say injustice. My very soul revolts against the 


PAUL FABER. 


1 86 

talk about kindness to the poor, when such a great part of 
their misery comes from the injustice and greed of the 
rich.” 

I well understand,” returned Mr. Drake, “ that a man’s 
first business is to be just to his neighbor, but I do not so 
clearly see when he is to interfere to make others just. Our 
Lord would not settle the division of the inheritance between 
the two brothers.” 

“ No, but he gave them a lesson concerning avarice, and 
left that to work. I don’t suppose any body is unjust for 
love of injustice. I don’t understand the pure devilish very 
well — though I have glimpses into it. Your way must be 
different from our Lord’s in form, that it may be the same 
in spirit : you have to work with money ; His father had 
given Him none. In His mission He was not to use all means 
— only the best. But even He did not attack individuals to 
make them do right ; and if you employ your money in 
doing justice to the oppressed and afflicted, to those shorn 
of the commonest rights of humanity, it will be the most pow- 
erful influence of all to wake the sleeping justice in the dull 
hearts of other men. It is the business of any body who can, to 
set right what any body has set wrong. I will give you a special 
instance, which h^s been in my mind all the time. Last 
spring — and it was the same the spring before, my first in 
Glaston — the floods brought misery upon every family in 
what they call the Pottery here. How some of them get 
through any wet season I can not think ; but Faber will tell 
you what a multitude of sore throats, cases of croup, scarlet- 
fever, and diphtheria, he has to attend in those houses every 
spring and autumn. They are crowded with laborers and 
their families, who, since the railway came, have no choice 
but live there, and pay a much heavier rent in proportion to 
their accommodation than you or I do — in proportion to the 
value of the property, immensely heavier. Is it not hard ? 
Men are their brothers’ keepers indeed — but it is in chains 
of wretchedness they keep them. Then again — I am told 
that the owner of these cottages, who draws a large yearly 
sum from them, and to the entreaties of his tenants for 
really needful repairs, gives nothing but promises, is one of 
the most influential attendants of a chapel you know, where, 
Sunday after Sunday, the gospel is preached. If this be 
true, here again is a sad wrong : what can those people 
think of religion so represented ? ” 

“I am a sinful man,” exclaimed the pastor. “ That 


PAUL FABER. 


187 

Barwood is one of the deacons. He is the owner of the 
chapel as well as the cottages. I ought to have spoken to 
him years ago. — But,” he cried, starting to his feet, “ the 
property is for sale ! I saw it in the paper this very morn- 
ing ! Thank God ! ” — He caught up his hat. — “ I shall 
have no choice but buy the chapel too,” he added, with a 
queer, humorous smile ; “ — it is part of the property. — 
Come with me, my dear sir. We must see to it directly. 
You will speak : I would rather not appear in the affair 
until the property is my own ; but I will buy those houses, 
please God, and make them such as His poor sons and 
daughters may live in without fear or shame.” 

The curate was not one to give a cold bath to enthusiasm. 
They went out together, got all needful information, and 
within a month the title-deeds were in Mr. Drake’s posses- 
sion. 

When the rumor reached the members of his late 
congregation that he had come in for a large property, 
many called to congratulate him, and such congratulations 
are pretty sure to be sincere. But he was both annoyed 
and amused when — it was in the morning during business 
hours — Dorothy came and told him, not without some show 
of disgust, that a deputation from the church in Cow-lane 
was below. 

“ We’ve taken the liberty of calling, in the name of the 
church, to congratulate you, Mr. Drake,” said their leader, 
rising with the rest as the minister entered the dining-room. 

“ Thank you,” returned the minister quietly. 

“ I fancy,” said the other, who was Barwood himself, 
with a smile such as heralds the facetious, “ you will hardly 
condescend to receive our little gratuity now ? ” 

“ I shall not require it, gentlemen.” 

“ Of course we should never have offered you such a 
small sum, if we hadn’t known you were independent of us.” 

Why then did you offer it at all ? ” asked the minister. 

“ As a token of our regard.” 

“ The regard could not be very lively that made no 
inquiry as to our circumstances. My daughter had twenty 
pounds a year ; I had nothing. We were in no small peril 
of simple starvation.” 

“ Bless my soul ! we hadn’t an idea of such a thing, sir ! 
Why didn’t you tell us ? ” 

Mr. Drake smiled, and made no other reply. 

Well, sir,” resumed Barwood, after a very brief pause, 


i88 


PAUL FABER. 


for he was a man of magnificent assurance, as it’s all 
turned out so well, you’ll let bygones be bygones, and give 
us a hand ? ” 

I am obliged to you for calling,” said Mr. Drake, 
« — especially to you, Mr. Barwood, because it gives me an 
opportunity of confessing a fault of omission on my part 
toward you.” 

Here the pastor was wrong. Not having done his duty 
when he ought, he should have said nothing now it was 
needless for the wronged, and likely only to irritate the 
wrong-doer. 

Don’t mention it, pray,” said Mr. Barwood. “ This is 
a time to forget every thing.” 

“ I ought to have pointed out to you, Mr. Barwood,” 
pursued the minister, “ both for your own sake and that of 
those poor families, your tenants, that your property in this 
lower part of the town was quite unfit for the habitation of 
human beings.” 

Don’t let your conscience trouble you on the score of 
that neglect,” answered the deacon, his face flushing with 
anger, while he tried to force a smile : “ I shouldn’t have paid 
the least attention to it if you had. My firm opinion has 
always been that a minister's duty is to preach the gospel, 
not meddle in the private affairs of the members of his 
church ; and if you knew all, Mr. Drake, you would not 
have gone out of your way to make the remark. But that’s 
neither here nor there, for it’s not the business as we’ve 
come upon. — Mr. Drake, it’s a clear thing to every one as 
looks into it, that the cause will never prosper so long as 
that’s the chapel we’ve got. We did think as perhaps a 
younger man might do something to counteract church- 
influences ; but there don’t seem any sign of betterment 
yet. In fact, thinks looks worse. No, sir ! it’s the chapel 
as is the stumbling-block. What has religion got to do with 
what’s ugly and dirty ! A place that any lady or gentle- 
man, let he or she be so much of a Christian, might turn up 
the nose and refrain the foot from ! No ! 1 say ; what we 

want is a new place of worship. Cow-lane is behind the 
age — and that musty ! uw ! ” 

“ With the words of truth left sticking on the walls ? ” 
suggested Mr. Drake. 

“ Ha ! ha ! ha ! — Good that ! ” exclaimed several. 

But the pastor’s face looked stern, and the voices dropped 
into rebuked silence. 


PAUL FABER 


189 

“ At least you’ll allow, sir,” persisted Barwood, “ that the 
house of God ought to be as good as the houses of his 
people. It stands to reason. Depend upon it. He won’t 
give us no success till we give Him a decent house. What ! 
are we to dwell in houses of cedar, and the ark of the Lord 
in a tent ? That’s what it comes to, sir ! ” 

The pastor’s spiritual gorge rose at this paganism in Jew 
clothing. 

“ You think God loves newness and finery better than the 
old walls where generations have worshiped ?” he said. 

“ I make no doubt of it, sir,” answered Barwood. “ What’s 
generations to him ! He wants the people drawn to His 
house ; and what there is in Cow-lane to draw is more than 
1 know.” 

I understand you wish to sell the chapel,” said Mr. 
Drake. “ Is it not rather imprudent to bring down the 
value of your property before you have got rid of it ? ” 

Barwood smiled a superior smile. He considered the 
bargain safe, and thought the purchaser a man who was 
certain to pull the chapel down. 

“ I know who the intending purchaser is,” said Mr. Drake, 
“ and ” 

Barwood’s countenance changed : he bethought himself 
that the conveyance was not completed, and half started 
from his chair. 

“ You would never go to do such an unneighborly act,” 
he cried, “ as ” 

“ — As conspire to bring down the value of a property 
the moment it had passed out of my hands ? — I would not, 
Mr. Barwood ; and this very day the intending purchaser 
shall know of your project.” 

Barwood locked his teeth together, and grinned with rage. 
He jumped from his seat, knocked it over in getting his hat 
from under it, and rushed out of the house. Mr. Drake 
smiled, and looking calmly round on the rest of the deacons, 
held his peace. It was a very awkward moment for them. 
At length one of them, a small tradesman, ventured to 
speak. He dared make no allusion to the catastrophe that 
had occurred. It would take much reflection to get hold of 
the true weight and bearing of what they had just heard and 
seen, for Barwood was a mighty man among them. 

“ What we were thinking, sir,” he said, “ — and you will 
please to remember, Mr. Drake, that I was always on your 
side, and it’s better to come to the point ; there’s a strong 


PAUL FABER. 


190 

party of us in the church, sir, that would like to have you 
back, and we was thinking if you would condescend to help 
us, now as you’re so well able to, sir, toward a new chapel, 
now as you have the means, as well as the will, to do God 
service, sir, what with the chapel-building society, and every 
man-jack of us setting our shoulder to the wheel, and we 
should all do our very best, we should get a nice, new, I 
won’t say showy, but attractive — that’s the word, attractive 
place — not gaudy, you know, I never would give in to that, 
but ornamental too — and in a word, attractive — that’s it — a 
place to which the people would be drawn by the look of it 
outside, and kep’ by the look of it inside — a place as would 
make the people of Glaston say, ‘ Come, and let us go up to 
the house of the Lord,’ — if, with your help, sir, we had such 
a place, then perhaps you would condescend to take the 
reins again, sir, and we should then pay Mr. Rudd as your 
assistant, leaving the whole management in your hands — to 
preach when you pleased, and leave it alone when you 
didn’t. — There, sir ! I think that’s much the whole thing in 
a nut-shell.” 

“ And now will you tell me what result you would look 
for under such an arrangement ? ” 

“ We should look for the blessing of a little success ; it’s 
a many years since we was favored with any.” 

“ And by success you mean ? ” 

“ A large attendance of regular hearers in the morning — 
not a seat to let ! — and the people of Glaston crowding to 
hear the word in the evening, and going away because they 
can’t get a foot inside the place ! That’s the success I 
should like to see.” 

“ What ! would you have all Glaston such as yourselves ! ” 
exclaimed the pastor indignantly. “ Gentlemen, this is the 
crowning humiliation of my life ! Yet I am glad of it, be- 
cause I deserve it, and it will help to make and keep me 
humble. I see in you the wood and hay and stubble with 
which, alas ! I have been building all these years ! I have 
been preaching dissent instead of Christ, and there you are ! 
— dissenters indeed — but can I — can I call you Christians ? 
Assuredly do I believe the form of your church that or- 
dained by the apostles, but woe is me for the material 
whereof it is built ! Were I to aid your plans with a single 
penny in the hope of withdrawing one inhabitant of Glaston 
from the preaching of Mr. Wingfold, a man who speaks the 
truth and fears nobody, as 1, alas ! have feared you, because 


PAUL FABER. 


I9I 

of your dullness of heart and slowness of understanding, I 
should be doing the body of Christ a grievous wrong. I 
have been as one beating the air in talking to you against 
episcopacy when I ought to have been preaching against 
dishonesty ; eulogizing Congregationalism, when I ought to 
have been training you in the three abiding graces, and 
chiefly in the greatest of them, charity. I have taken to 
pieces and put together for you the plan of salvation, when 
I ought to have spoken only of Him who is the way and the 
life. I have been losing my life, and helping you to lose 
yours. But go to the abbey church, and there a man will 
stir you up to lay hold upon God, will teach you to know 
Christ, each man for himself and not for another. Shut up 
your chapel, put off your scheme for a new one, go to the 
abbey church, and be filled with the finest of the wheat. 
Then should this man depart, and one of the common epis- 
copal train, whose God is the church, and whose neighbor 
is the order of the priesthood, come to take his place, and 
preach against dissent as I have so foolishly preached 
against the church — then, and not until then, will the time 
be to gather together your savings and build yourselves a 
house to pray in. Then, if I am alive, as I hope I shall not 
be, come, and I will aid your purpose liberally. Do not 
mistake me ; I believe as strongly as ever I did that the 
constitution of the Church of England is all wrong ; that 
the arrogance and assumption of her priesthood is essent- 
ially opposed to the very idea of the kingdom of Heaven ; 
that the Athanasian creed is unintelligible, and where in- 
telligible, cruel ; but where I find my Lord preached as only 
one who understands Him can preach Him, and as I never 
could preach Him, and never heard Him preached before, 
even faults great as those shall be to me as merest accidents. 
Gentlemen, every thing is pure loss — chapels and creeds and 
churches — all is loss that comes between us and Christ — in- 
dividually, masterfully. And of unchristian things one of 
the most unchristian is to dispute and separate in the name 
of Him whose one object was, and whose one victory will be 
unity. — Gentlemen, if you should ever ask me to preach to 
you, I will do so with pleasure.” 

They rose as one man, bade him an embarrassed good 
morning, and walked from the room, some with their heads 
thrown back, other hanging them forward in worshipful 
shame. The former spread the rumor that the old minister 
had gone crazy, the latter began to go now and then to 
church. 


192 


PAUL FABER. 


I may here mention, as I shall have no other opportunity, 
that a new chapel was not built ; that the young pastor soon 
left the old one ; that the deacons declared themselves un- 
able to pay the rent ; that Mr. Drake took the place into 
his own hands, and preached there every Sunday evening, 
but went always in the morning to hear Mr. Wingfold. 
There was kindly human work of many sorts done by them 
in concert, and each felt the other a true support. When 
the pastor and the parson chanced to meet in some lowly 
cottage, it was never with embarrassment or apology, as if 
they served two masters, but always with hearty and glad 
greeting, and they always went away together, d doubt if 
wickedness does half as much harm as sectarianism, whether 
it be the sectarianism of the church or of dissent, the sec- 
tarianism whose virtue is condescension, or the sectarianism 
whose vice is pride. Division has done more to hide Christ 
from the view of men, than all the infidelity that has ever been 
spoken. It is the half-Christian clergy of every denomina- 
tion that are the main cause of the so-called failure of the 
Church of Christ. Thank God, it has not failed so miser- 
ably as to succeed in the estimation or to the satisfaction of 
any party in it. 

But it was not merely in relation to forms of church gov- 
ernment that the heart of the pastor now in his old age 
began to widen. It is foolish to say that after a certain age 
a man can not alter. That some men can not — or will not, 
(God only can draw the line between those two nots) I 
allow ; but the cause is not age, and it is not universal. 
The man who does not care and ceases to grow, becomes 
torpid, stiffens, is in a sense dead ; but he who has been 
growing all the time need never stop ; and where growth is, 
there is always capability of change : growth itself is a suc- 
cession of slow, melodious, ascending changes. 

The very next Sunday after the visit of their deputa- 
tion to him, the church in Cow-lane asked their old 
minister to preach to them. Dorothy, as a matter of 
course, went with her father, although, dearly as she loved 
him, she would have much preferred hearing what the 
curate had to say. The pastor’s text was. Ye pay tithe of 
mint and anise and cummin^ and have omitted the weightie?' 
matters of the law— judgment^ mercy ^ and faith. In his 
sermon he enforced certain of the dogmas of a theology 
which once expressed more truth than falsehood, but now 
at least conveys more falsehood than truth, because of the 


PAUL FABER. 


193 


changed conditions of those who teach and those who 
hear it ; for, even where his faith had been vital enough to 
burst the verbally rigid, formal, and indeed spiritually vul- 
gar theology he had been taught, his intellect had not been 
strong enough to cast off the husks. His expressions, as- 
sertions, and arguments, tying up a bundle of mighty truth 
with cords taken from the lumber-room and the ash-pit, 
grazed severely the tenderer nature of his daughter. When 
they reached the house, and she found herself alone with 
her father in his study, she broke suddenly into passionate 
complaint — not that he should so represent God, seeing, for 
what she knew. He might indeed be such, but that, so repre- 
senting God, he should expect men to love Him, It was not 
often that her sea, however troubled in its depths, rose into 
such visible storm. She threw herself upon the floor with 
a loud cry, and lay sobbing and weeping. Her father was 
terribly startled, and stood for a moment as if stunned ; 
then a faint slow light began to break in upon him, and he 
stood silent, sad, and thoughtful. He knew that he loved 
God, yet in what he said concerning Him, in the impression 
he gave of Him, there was that which prevented the best 
daughter in the world from loving her Father in Heaven ! 
He began to see that he had never really thought about 
these things ; he had been taught them but had never 
turned them over in the light, never perceived the fact, that, 
however much truth might be there, there also was what at 
least looked like a fearful lie against God. For a moment 
he gazed with keen compassion on his daughter as she lay, 
actually writhing in her agony, then kneeled beside her, and 
laying his hand upon her, said gently : 

“ Well, my dear, if those things are not true, my saying 
them will not make them so.” 

She sprung to her feet, threw her arms about his neck, 
kissed him, and left the room. The minister remained upon 
his knees. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 


THE doctor’s house. 

The holidays came, and Juliet took advantage of them 
tv* escape from what had begun to be a bondage to her — 
the daily intercourse with people who disapproved of the 
man she loved. In her thoughts even she took no intellect- 
ual position against them with regard to what she called 
doctrine, and Faber superstition. Her father had believed 
as they did ; she clung to his memory ; perhaps she believed 
as he did ; she could not tell. There was time yet wherein 
to make up her mind. She had certainly believed so once, 
she said to herself, and she might so believe again. She 
would have been at first highly offended, but the next 
moment a little pleased at being told that in reality she had 
never believed one whit more than Faber, that she was at 
present indeed incapable of believing. Probably she would 
have replied, “ Then wherein am I to blame ? ” But although 
a woman who sits with her child in her arms in the midst of 
her burning house, half asleep, and half stifled and dazed 
with the fierce smoke, may not be to blame, certainly the 
moment she is able to excuse herself she is bound to make 
for the door. So long as men do not feel that they are in a 
bad condition and in danger of worse, the message of deliv- 
erance will sound to them as a threat. Yea, the offer of 
absolute well-being upon the only possible conditions of the 
well-being itself, must, if heard at all, rouse in them a dis- 
comfort whose cause they attribute to the message, not 
to themselves ; and immediately they will endeavor to jus- 
tify themselves in disregarding it. There are those doing 
all they can to strengthen themselves in unbelief, who, if the 
Lord were to appear plainly before their eyes, would tell 
Him they could not help it, for He had not until then given 
them ground enough for faith, and when He left them, would 
go on just as before, except that they would speculate and 
pride themselves on the vision. If men say, “ We want no 
such deliverance,” then the Maker of them must either 
destroy them as vile things for whose existence He is to 
Himself accountable, or compel them to change. If they 
say, “We choose to be destroyed,” He, as their Maker, has 
a choice in the matter too. Is He not free to say, “ You 


PAUL FABER. 


195 


can not even slay yourselves, and I choose that you shall 
know the death of living without Me ; you shall learn to 
choose to live indeed. I choose that you shall know what T 
know to be good ” ? And however much any individual 
consciousness may rebel, surely the individual consciousness 
which called that other into being, and is the Father of that 
being, fit to be such because of Himself He is such, has a 
right to object that by rebellion His creature should destroy 
the very power by which it rebels, and from a being capable 
of a divine freedom by partaking of the divine nature, 
should make of itself the merest slave incapable of will of any 
sort ! Is it a wrong to compel His creature to soar aloft 
into the ether of its origin, and find its deepest, its only 
true self ? It is God’s knowing choice of life against man’s 
ignorant choice of death. 

But Juliet knew nothing of such a region of strife in the 
human soul. She had no suspicion what an awful swamp 
lay around the prison of her self-content — no, self-discon- 
tent — in which she lay chained. To her the one good and 
desirable thing was the love and company of Paul Faber. 
He was her saviour, she said to herself, and the woman who 
could not love and trust and lean upon such a heart of 
devotion and unselfishness as his, was unworthy of the 
smallest of his thoughts. He was nobility, generosity, just- 
ice itself ! If she sought to lay her faults bare to him, he 
would but fold her to his bosom to shut them out from her 
own vision ! He would but lay his hand on the lips of con- 
fession, and silence them as unbelievers in his perfect affec- 
tion ! He was better than the God the Wingfolds and 
Drakes believed in, with whom humiliation was a condition 
of acceptance ! 

She told the Drakes that, for the air of Owlkirk, she was 
going to occupy her old quarters with Mrs. Puckridge dur- 
ing the holidays. They were not much surprised, for they 
had remarked a change in her manner, and it was not long 
unexplained : for, walking from the Old House together 
one evening rather late, they met her with the doctor in a 
little frequented part of the park. When she left them, 
they knew she would not return ; and her tears betrayed 
that she knew it also. 

Meantime the negotiation for the purchase of the Old 
House of Glaston was advancing with slow legal sinuosity. 
Mr. Drake had offered the full value of the property, and 
the tender seemed to be regarded not unfavorably. But 


196 


PAUL FABER. 


his heart and mind were far more occupied with the hum- 
bler property he had already secured in the town : that was 
now to be fortified against the incursions of the river, with 
its attendant fevers and agues. A survey of the ground 
had satisfied him that a wall at a certain point would divert 
a great portion of the water, and this wall he proceeded at 
once to build. He hoped in the end to inclose the ground 
altogether, or at least to defend it at every assailable point, 
but there were many other changes imperative, with diffi- 
culties such that they could not all be coped with at once. 
The worst of the cottages must be pulled down, and as 
they were all even over-full, he must contrive to build first. 
Nor until that was done, could he effect much toward ren- 
dering the best of them fit for human habitation. 

Some of the householders in the lower part of the adjoin- 
ing street shook their heads when they saw what the brick- 
layers were about. They had reason to fear they were 
turning the water more upon them ; and it seemed a wrong 
that the wretched cottages which had from time immemorial 
been accustomed to the water, should be now protected 
from it at the cost of respectable houses ! It did not occur 
to them that it might be time for Lady Fortune to give her 
wheel a few inches of a turn. To common minds, custom 
is always right so long as it is on their side. 

In the meantime the chapel in the park at Nestley had 
been advancing, for the rector, who was by nature no 
dawdler where he was interested, had been pushing it on ; 
and at length on a certain Sunday evening in the autumn, 
the people of the neighborhood having been invited to 
attend, the rector read prayers in it, and the curate preached 
a sermon. At the close of the service the congregation was 
informed that prayers would be read there every Sunday 
evening, and that was all. Mrs. Bevis, honest soul, the 
green-mantled pool of whose being might well desire a 
wind, if only from a pair of bellows, to disturb its repose, 
for not a fish moved to that end in its sunless deeps — I say 
deeps, for such there must have ‘been, although neither* 
she nor her friends were acquainted with any thing there 
but shallows — was the only one inclined to grumble at the 
total absence of ceremonial pomp : she did want her husband 
to have the credit of the great deed. 

About the same time it was that Juliet again sought the 
cottage at Owlkirk, with the full consciousness that she 
went there to meet her fate. Faber came to see her every 


PAUL FABER. 


197 


day, and both Ruber and Niger began to grow skinny. 
But I have already said enough to show the nature and 
course of the stream, and am not bound to linger longer 
over its noise among the pebbles. Some things are inter- 
esting rather for their results than their process, and of 
such I confess it is to me the love-making of these two. — 
What ! were they not human ? ” Yes : but with a trun- 
cated humanity — even shorn of its flower-buds, and full 
only of variegated leaves. It shall suffice therefore to 
say that, in a will-less sort of a way, Juliet let the matter 
drift ; that, although she withheld explicit consent, she yet 
at length allowed Faber to speak as if she had given it ; that 
they had long ceased to talk about God or no God, about 
life and death, about truth and superstition, and spoke 
only of love, and the days at hand, and how they would 
spend them ; that they poured out their hearts in praising 
and worshiping each other ; and that, at last, Juliet found 
herself as firmly engaged to be Paul’s wife, as if she had 
granted every one of the promises he had sought to draw 
from her, but which she had avoided giving in the weak 
fancy that thus she was holding herself free. It was per- 
fectly understood in all the neighborhood that the doctor 
and Miss Meredith were engaged. Both Helen and 
Dorothy felt a little hurt at her keeping an absolute silence 
toward them concerning what the country seemed to know ; 
but when they spoke of it to her, she pointedly denied any 
engagement, and indeed although helplessly drifting toward 
marriage, had not yet given absolute consent even in her 
own mind. She dared not even then regard it as inevitable. 
Her two friends came to the conclusion that she could not 
find the courage to face disapproval, and perhaps feared 
expostulation. 

“ She may well be ashamed of such an unequal yoking ! 
said Helen to her husband. 

“ There is no unequal yoking in it that I see,” he 
returned. “ In the matter of faith, what is there to choose 
between them ? I see nothing. They may carry the yoke 
straight enough. If there be one of them further from the 
truth than the other, it must be the one who says, I go sir, 
and goes not. Between dont believe and dont care, I don’t 
care to choose. Let them marry and God bless them. It 
will be good for them — for one thing if for no other — it is 
sure to bring trouble to both.” 

Indeed, Mr. Wingfold ! ” returned Helen playfully. 


PAUL FABER. 


198 

So that is how you regard marriage ! — Sure to bring 
trouble ! ” 

She laid her head on his shoulder. 

“ Trouble to every one, my Helen, like the gospel itself ; 
more trouble to you than to me, but none to either that 
will not serve to bring us closer to each other,” he answered. 
“ But about those two — well, I am both doubtful and hope- 
ful. At all events I can not wish them not to marry. I 
think it will be for both of them a step nearer to the truth. 
The trouble will, perhaps, drive them to find God. That 
any one who had seen and loved our Lord, should consent 
to marry one, whatever that one was besides, who did not 
at least revere and try to obey Him, seems to me impossi- 
ble. But again I say there is no such matter involved 
between them. — Shall I confess to you, that, with all her 
frankness, all her charming ways, all the fullness of the gaze 
with which her black eyes look into yours, there is some- 
thing about Juliet that puzzles me? At times I have 
thought she must be in some trouble, out of which she was 
on the point of asking me to help her ; at others I have 
fancied she was trying to be agreeable against her inclina- 
tion, and did not more than half approve of me. Some- 
times, I confess, the shadow of a doubt crosses me : is she 
altogetner a true woman ? But that vanishes the moment 
she smiles. I wish she could have been open with me. 
I could have helped her, I am pretty sure. As it is, I have 
not got one step nearer the real woman than when first I 
saw her at the rector’s.” 

“ I know,” said Helen. “ But don’t you think it may be 
that she has never yet come to know any thing about herself 
— to perceive either fact or mystery of her own nature ? If 
she is a stranger to herself, she cannot reveal herself 
— at least of her own will — to those about her. She is just 
what I was, Thomas, before I knew you — a dull, sleepy- 
hearted thing that sat on her dignity. Be sure she has not 
an idea of the divine truth you have taught me to see under- 
lying creation itself — namely, that every thing possessed 
owes its very value as possession to the power which that 
possession gives of parting with it.” 

“ You are a pupil worth having, Helen ! — even if I had 
had to mourn all my days that you would not love me.” 

“And now you have said your mind about Juliet,” Helen 
went on, “ allow me to say that I trust her more than I do 
Faber. I do not for a moment imagine him consciously 


PAUL FABER. 


199 


dishonest, but he makes too much show of his honesty for 
me. I can not help feeling that he is selfish — and can a 
selfish man be honest ? ” 

“ Not thoroughly. I know that only too well, for I at all 
events am selfish, Helen.” 

“ I don’t see it ; but if you are, you know it, and hate it, 
and strive against it. I do not think he knows it, even 
when he says that every body is selfish. Only, what better 
way to get rid of it than to love and marry ? ” 

“ Or to confirm it,” said Wingfold thoughtfully. 

“ I shouldn’t wonder a bit if they’re married already ! ” 
said Helen. 

She was not far from wrong, although not quite right. 
Already Faber had more than hinted at a hurried marriage, 
as private as could be compassed. It was impossible of 
course, to be married at church. That would be to cast 
mockery on the marriage itself, as well as on what Faber 
called his beliefs. The objection was entirely on Faber’s 
side, but Juliet did not hint at the least difference of 
feeling in the matter. She let every thing take its way 
now. 

At length having, in a neighboring town, arranged all the 
necessary preliminaries, Faber got one of the other doctors 
in Glaston to attend to his practice for three weeks, and 
went to take a holiday. Juliet left Owlkirk the same day. 
They met, were lawfully married, and at the close of the 
three weeks, returned together to the doctor’s house. 

The sort of thing did not please Glaston society, and 
although Faber was too popular as a doctor to lose position 
by it, Glaston was slow in acknowledging that it knew there 
was a lady at the head of his house. Mrs. Wingfold and Miss 
Drake, however, set their neighbors a good example, and 
by degrees there came about a dribbling sort of recognition. 
Their social superiors stood the longest aloof — chiefly be- 
cause the lady had been a governess, and yet had behaved 
so like one of themselves ; they thought it well to give her a 
lesson. Most of them, however, not willing to offend the 
leading doctor in the place, yielded and called. Two elderly 
spinsters and Mrs. Ramshorn did not. The latter declared 
she did not believe they were married. Most agreed they 
were the handsomest couple ever seen in that quarter, and 
looked all right. 

Juliet returned the calls made upon her, at the proper 
retaliatory intervals, and gradually her mode of existence 


200 


PAUL FABER. 


fell into routine. The doctor went out every day, and was 
out most of the day, while she sat at home and worked 
or read. She had to amuse herself, and sometimes found 
life duller than when she had to earn her bread — when, as 
she went from place to place, she might at any turn meet 
Paul upon Ruber or Niger. Already the weary weed of the 
commonplace had begun to show itself in the marriage 
garden — a weed which, like all weeds, requires only neglect 
for perfect development, when it will drive the lazy Eve who 
has never made her life worth livings to ask whether life be 
worth having. She was not a great reader. No book had 
ever yet been to her a well-spring of life ; and such books as 
she liked best it was perhaps just as well that she could not 
easily procure in Glaston ; for, always ready to appreciate 
the noble, she had not moral discernment sufficient to pro- 
tect her from the influence of such books as paint poor 
action in noble color. For a time also she was stinted in her 
natural nouri^ment : her husband had ordered a grand 
piano from London for her, but it had not yet arrived ; and 
the first touch she laid on the tall spinster-looking one that 
had stood in the drawing-room for fifty years, with red silk 
wrinkles radiating from a gilt center, had made her shriek. 
If only Paul would buy a yellow gig, like his friend Dr. May 
of Broughill, and take her with him on his rounds ! Or if 
she had a friend or two to go and see when he was out ! — 
friends like what Helen or even Dorothy might have been : 
she was not going to be hand-in-glove with any body that 
didn’t like her Paul ! She missed church too — not the 
prayers, much ; but she did like hearing what she counted 
a good sermon, that is, a lively one. Her husband wanted 
her to take up some science, but if he had considered that, 
with all her gift in music, she expressed an utter indifference 
to thorough bass, he would hardly have been so foolish. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE PONY-CARRIAGE. 

One Saturday morning the doctor was called to a place a 
good many miles distant, and Juliet was left with the prospect 
of being longer alone than usual. She felt it almost sultry 
although so late in the season, and could not rest in the 


PAUL FABER. 


201 


house. She pretended to herself she had some shopping to 
do in Pine Street, but it was rather a longing for air and 
niotion that sent her out. Also, certain thoughts which she 
did not like, had of late been coming more frequently, and 
she found it easier to avoid them in the street. They were 
not such as troubled her from being hard to think out. 
Properly speaking, she thought less now than ever. She 
often said nice things, but they were mostly the mere gra- 
cious movements of a nature sweet, playful, trusting, fond of 
all beautiful things, and quick to see artistic relation where 
her perception reached. 

As she turned the corner of Mr. Drew’s shop, the house- 
door opened, and a lady came out. It was Mr. Drew’s 
lodger. Juliet knew nothing about her, and was not aware 
that she had ever seen her ; but the lady started as if she 
recognized her. To that kind of thing Juliet was accus- 
tomed, for her style of beauty was any thing but common. 
The lady’s regard however was so fixed that it drew hers, 
and as their eyes met, Juliet felt something, almost a physical 
pain, shoot through her heart. She could not understand it, 
but presently began to suspect, and by degrees became quite 
certain that she had seen her before, though she could not tell 
where. The effect the sight of her had had, indicated some 
painful association, which she must recall before she could 
be at rest. She turned in the other direction, and walked 
straight from the town, that she might think without eyes 
upon her. 

Scene after scene of her life came back as she searched to 
find some circumstance associated with that face. Once and 
again she seemed on the point of laying hold of something, 
when the face itself vanished and she had that to recall, and 
the search to resume from the beginning. In the process 
many painful memories arose, some, connected with her 
mother, unhappy in themselves, others, connected with her 
father, grown unhappy from her marriage ; for thereby she 
had built a wall between her thoughts and her memories of 
him ; and, if there should be a life beyond this, had hol- 
lowed a gulf between them forever. 

Gradually her thoughts took another direction. — Could it 
be that already the glamuor had begun to disperse, the roses 
of love to wither, the magic to lose its force, the common 
look of things to return ? Paul was as kind, as courteous, as 
considerate as ever, and yet there was a difference. Her 
heart did not grow wild, her blood did not rush to her face, 


202 


PAUL FABER. 


when she heard the sound of his horse’s hoofs in the street, 
though she knew them instantly. Sadder and sadder grew 
her thoughts as she walked along, careless whither. 

Had she begun to cease loving ? No. She loved better 
than she knew, but she must love infinitely better yet. The 
first glow was gone — already : she had thought it would not 
go, and was miserable. She recalled that even her honeymoon 
had a little disappointed her. I would not be mistaken 
as implying that any of these her reflections had their origin 
in what was peculiar in the character, outlook, or speculation 
of herself or her husband. The passion of love is but the 
vestibule — the pylon — to the temple of love. A garden lies 
between the pylon and the adytum. They that will enter the 
sanctuary must walk through the garden. But some start 
to see the roses already withering, sit down and weep and 
watch their decay, until at length the aged flowers hang 
drooping all around them, and lo ! their hearts are withered 
also, and when they rise they turn their backs on the holy of 
holies, and their feet toward the gate. 

Juliet was proud of her Paul, and loved him as much as 
she was yet capable of loving. But she had thought they 
were enough for each other, and already, although she was 
far from acknowledging it to herself, she had, in the twilight 
of her thinking, begun to doubt it. Nor can she be blamed 
for the doubt. Never man and woman yet succeeded in 
being all in all to each other. 

It were presumption to say that a lonely God would be 
enough for Himself, seeing that we can know nothing of God 
but as He is our Father. What if the Creator Himself is suf- 
ficient to Himself in virtue of His self-existent creatorship ? 
Let my reader think it out. The lower we go in the scale 
of creation, the more independent is the individual. The 
richer and more perfect each of a married pair is in the other 
relations of life, the more is each to the other. For us, the 
children of eternal love, the very air our spirits breathe, and 
without which they can not live, is the eternal life ; for us, 
the brothers and sisters of a countless family, the very space 
in which our souls can exist, is the love of each and every 
soul of our kind. 

Such were not Juliet’s thoughts. To her such would have 
seemed as unreal as unintelligible. To her they would have 
looked just what some of my readers will pronounce them, 
not in the least knowing what they are. She was suddenly 
roused from her painful reverie by the pulling up of Helen’s 


PAUL FABER. 


203 


ponies, with much clatter and wriggling recoil, close beside 
her, rnaking more fuss with their toy-carriage than the 
mightiest of tractive steeds with the chariot of pomp. 

“ Jump in, Juliet,” cried their driver, addressing her with 
the greater abandon that she was resolved no stiffness on her 
part should deposit a grain to the silting up of the channel 
of former alfection. She was one of the few who under- 
stand that no being can afford to let the smallest love-germ 
die. 

Juliet hesitated. She was not a little bewildered with the 
sudden recall from the moony plains of memory, and the 
demand for immediate action. She answered uncertainly, 
trying to think what was involved. 

“ I know your husband is not waiting you at home,” pur- 
sued Helen. “ I saw him on Ruber, three fields off, riding 
away from Glaston. Jump in, dear. You can make up that 
mind of yours in the carriage as well as upon the road. I 
will set you down wherever you please. My husband is out 
too, so the slaves can take their pleasure.” 

Juliet could not resist, had little inclination to do so, 
yielded without another word, and took her place beside 
Helen, a little shy of being alone with her, yet glad of her 
company. Away went the ponies, and as soon as she had 
got them settled to their work, Helen turned her face toward 
Juliet. 

“ I am so glad to see you ! ” she said. 

Juliet’s heart spoke too loud for her throat. It was a 
relief to her that Helen had to keep her eyes on her charge, 
the quickness of whose every motion rendered watchfulness 
right needful. 

“ Have you returned Mrs. Bevis’s call yet ! ” asked 
Helen. 

“ No,” murmured Juliet. “ I haven’t been able yet.” 

‘‘Well, here is a good chance. Sit where you are, and 
you will be at Nestley in half an hour, and I shall be the 
more welcome. You are a great favorite there ! ” 

“ How kind you are ! ” said Juliet, the tears beginning to 
rise. “ Indeed, Mrs. Wingfold, ” 

“ You used to call me Helen ! ” said that lady, pulling up 
her ponies with sudden energy, as they shied at a bit of 
paper on the road, and nearly had themselves and all they 
drew in the ditch. 

“ May I call you so still ? ” 

“ Surely ! What else ? ” 


204 


PAUL FABER. 


“ You are too good to me ! ” said Juliet, and wept out- 
right. 

“ My dear Juliet,” returned Helen, “ I will be quite plain 
with you, and that will put things straight in a moment. 
Your friends understand perfectly why you have avoided 
them of late, and are quite sure it is from no unkindness to 
any of them. But neither must you imagine we think hardly 
of you for marrying Mr. Faber. We detest his opinions so 
much that we feel sure if you saw a little further into them, 
neither of you would hold them.” 

‘‘ But I don’t — that is, I ” 

You don’t know whether you hold them or not : I un- 
derstand quite well. My husband says in your case it does 
not matter much ; for if you had ever really believed in 
Jesus Christ, you could not have done it. At all events now 
the thing is done, there is no question about it left. Dear 
Juliet, think of us as your friends still, who will always be 
glad to see you, and ready to help you where we can.” 

Juliet was weeping for genuine gladness now. But even 
as she wept, by one of those strange movements of our being 
which those who have been quickest to question them won- 
der at the most, it flashed upon her where she had seen the 
lady that came from Mr. Drew’s house, and her heart sunk 
within her, for the place was associated with that portion of 
her history which of all she would most gladly hide from 
herself. During the rest of the drive she was so silent, that 
Helen at last gave up trying to talk to her. Then first she 
observed how the clouds had risen on all sides and were 
meeting above, and that the air was more still and sultry 
than ever. 

Just as they got within Nestley-gate, a flash of lightning, 
scarcely followed by a loud thunder-clap, shot from over- 
head. The ponies plunged, reared, swayed asunder from 
the pole, nearly fell, and recovered themselves only to dart off 
in wild terror. Juliet screamed. 

“ Don’t be frightened, child,” said Helen. “ There is no 
danger here. The road is staight and there is nothing on 
it. I shall soon pull them up. Only don’t cry out : that 
will be as little to their taste as the lightning.” 

Juliet caught at the reins. 

“ For God’s sake, don’t do that ! ” cried Flelen, balking 
her clutch. “ You will kill us both.” 

Juliet sunk back in her seat. The ponies went at full speed 
along the road. The danger was small, for the park was 


PAUL FABER. 


205 


upon both sides, level with the drive, in which there was a 
slight ascent. Helen was perfectly quiet, and went on 
gradually tightening her pull upon the reins. Before they 
reached the house, she had entirely regained her command 
of them. When she drew up to the door, they stood quite 
steady, but panting as if their little sides would fly asunder. 
By this time Helen was red as a rose ; her eyes were flash- 
ing, and a smile was playing about her mouth ; but Juliet 
was like a lily on which the rain has been falling all night : 
her very lips were bloodless. When Helen turned and saw 
her, she was far more frightened than the ponies could make 
her. 

“ Why, Juliet, my dear ! ” she said, “ I had no thought 
you were so terrifled ! What would your husband say to 
me for frightening you so ! But you are safe now.” 

A servant came to take the ponies. Helen got out first, 
and gave her hand to Juliet. 

“ Don’t think me a coward, Helen,” she said. “ It was 
the thunder. I never could bear thunder.” 

“ I should be far more of a coward than you are, Juliet,” 
answered Helen, “ if I believed, or even feared, that just a 
false step of little Zephyr there, or one plunge more from 
Zoe, might wipe out the world, and I should never more see 
the face of my husband.” 

She spoke eagerly, lovingly, believingly. Juliet shivered, 
stopped, and laid hold of the baluster rail. Things had been 
too much for her that day. She looked so ill that Helen 
was again alarmed, but she soon came to herself a little, and 
they went on to Mrs. Bevis’s room. She received them 
most kindly, made Mrs. Faber lie on the sofa, covered her 
over, for .she was still trembling, and got her a glass of 
wine. But she could not drink it, and lay sobbing in vain 
endeavor to control herself. 

Meantime the clouds gathered thicker and thicker : the 
thunder-peal that frightened the ponies had been but the 
herald of the storm, and now it came on in earnest. The 
rain rushed suddenly on the earth, and as soon as she heard 
it, Juliet ceased to sob. At every flash, however, although 
she lay with her eyes shut, ^nd her face pressed into the pil- 
low, she shivered and moaned. — “ Why should one,” thought 
Helen, “ who is merely and only the child of Nature, find 
herself so little at home with her ? ” Presently Mr. Bevis 
came running in from the stable, drenched in crossing to 
the house. As he passed to his room, he opened the door 
of his wife’s, and looked in. 


2o6 


PAUL FABER. 


“ I am glad to see you safely housed, ladies,” he said. 

You must make up your minds to stay where you are. It 
will not clear before the moon rises, and that will be about 
midnight. I will send John to tell your husbands that you 
are not cowering under a hedge, and will not be home to- 
night.” 

He was a good weather-prophet. The rain went on. In 
the evening the two husbands appeared, dripping. They 
had come on horseback together, and would ride home 
again after dinner. The doctor would have to be out the 
greater part of the Sunday, and would gladly leave his wife 
in such good quarters ; the curate would walk out to his 
preaching in the evening, and drive home with Helen 
after it, taking Juliet, if she should be able to accompany 
them. 

After dinner, when the ladies had left them, between the 
two clergymen and the doctor arose the conversation of 
which I will now give the substance, leaving the commence- 
ment, and taking it up at an advanced point. 

“ Now tell me,” said Faber, in the tone of one satisfied he 
must be allowed in the right, “ which is the nobler — to serve 
your neighbor in the hope of a future, believing in a God 
who will reward you, or to serve him in the dark, obeying 
your conscience, with no other hope than that those who 
come after you will be the better for you ? ” 

“ I allow most heartily,” answered Wingfold, “ and with 
all admiration, that it is indeed grand in one hopeless for 
himself to live well for the sake of generations to come, 
which he will never see, and which will never hear of him. 
But I will not allow that there is any thing grand in being 
hopeless for one’s self, or in serving the Unseen rather than 
those about you, seeing it is easier to work for those who 
can not oppose you, than to endure the contradiction of sin- 
ners. But I know you agree with me that the best way to 
assist posterity is to be true to your contemporaries, so there 
I need say no more — except that the hopeless man can do 
the least for his fellows, being unable to give them any thing 
that should render them other than hopeless themselves ; 
and if, for the grandeur of it, a man were to cast away his 
purse in order to have the praise of parting with the two 
mites left in his pocket, you would simply say the man was 
a fool. This much seems to me clear, that, if there be no 
God, it may be nobler to be able to live without one ; but, 
if there be a God, it must be nobler not to be able to live 


PAUL FABER. 


207 


without Him. The moment, however, that nobility becomes 
the object in any action, that moment the nobleness of the 
action vanishes. The man who serves his fellow that he 
may himself be noble, misses the mark. He alone who fol- 
lows the truth, not he who follows nobility, shall attain the 
noble. A man’s nobility will, in the end, prove just com- 
mensurate with his humanity — with the love he bears his 
neighbor — not the amount of work he may have done for 
him. A man might throw a lordly gift to his fellow, like a 
bone to a dog, and damn himself in the deed. You may in- 
sult a dog by the way you give him his bone.” 

“ I dispute nothing of all that,” said Faber — while good 
Mr. Bevis sat listening hard, not quite able to follow the dis- 
cussion ; “ but I know you will admit that to do right from 
respect to any reward whatever, hardly amounts to doing 
right at all.” 

“ I doubt if any man ever did or could do a thing worthy 
of passing as in itself good, for the sake of a reward,” 
rejoined Wingfold. “ Certainly, to do good for something 
else than good, is not good at all. But perhaps a reward 
may so influence a low nature as to bring it a little into con- 
tact with what is good, whence the better part of it may 
make some acquaintance with good. Also, the desire of the 
approbation of the Perfect, might nobly help a man who was 
finding his duty hard, for it would humble as well as 
strengthen him, and is but another form of the love of the 
good. The praise of God will always humble a man, I 
think.” 

‘‘ There you are out of my depth,” said Faber. “ I know 
nothing about that.” 

“ I go on then to say,” continued the curate, “ that a man 
may well be strengthened and encouraged by the hope of 
being made a better and truer man, and capable of greater 
self-forgetfulness and devotion. There is nothing low in 
having respect to such a reward as that, is there ? ” 

“ It seems to me better,” persisted the doctor, “ to do right 
for the sake of duty, than for the sake of any goodness even 
that will come thereby to yourself.” 

“ Assuredly, if self in the goodness, and not the gop^a 
ness itself be the object,” assented Wingfold. ‘‘When ^ 
duty lies before one, self ought to have no part in the ga^e 
we fix upon it ; but when thought reverts upon hini- 
self, who would avoid the wish to be a better man ? The 
man who will not do a thing for duty, will never get so far 


20 « 


PAUL FABER. 


as to derive any help from the hope of goodness. But duty 
itself is only a stage toward something better. It is but 
the impulse, God-given I believe, toward a far more vital 
contact with the truth. We shall one day forget all about 
duty, and do every thing from the love of the loveliness of 
it, the satisfaction of the rightness of it. What would you 
say to a man who ministered to the wants of his wife and 
family only from duty ? Of course you wish heartily that 
the man who neglects them would do it from any cause, 
even were it fear of the whip ; but the strongest and most 
operative sense of duty would not satisfy you in such a rela- 
tion. There are depths within depths of righteousness. 
Duty is the only path to freedom, but that freedom is the 
love that is beyond and prevents duty.” 

“ But,” said Faber, “ I have heard you say that to take 
from you your belief in a God would be to render you in- 
capable of action. Now, the man — I don’t mean myself, 
but the sort of a man for whom I stand up — does act, does 
his duty, without the strength of that belief : is he not then 
the stronger ? — Let us drop the word fioble^ 

“In the case supposed, he would be the stronger — for a 
time at least,” replied the curate. “ But you must remem- 
ber that to take from me the joy and glory of my life, 
namely the belief that I am the child of God, an heir of the 
Infinite, with the hope of being made perfectly righteous, 
loving like God Himself, would be something more than 
merely reducing me to the level of a man who had never 
loved God, or seen in the possibility of Him any thing to draw 
him. I should have lost the mighty dream of the universe ; 
he would be what and where he chose to be, and might 
well be the more capable. Were I to be convinced there is 
no God, and to recover by the mere force of animal life 
from the prostration into which the conviction cast me, I 
should, I hope, try to do what duty was left me, for I too 
should be filled, for a time at least, with an endless pity for 
my fellows ; but all would be so dreary, that I should be 
almost paralyzed for serving them, and should long for death 
to do them and myself the only good service. The thought 
of the generations doomed to be born into a sunless present, 
would almost make me join any conspiracy to put a stop to 
the race. I should agree with Hamlet that the whole thing 
had better come to an end. Would it necessarily indicate 
a lower nature, or condition, or habit of thought, that, hav- 
ing cherisned such hopes, I should, when I lost them, be 
more troubled than one who never had had thena t ” 


PAUL FABER. 


209 


“ Still,” said Faber, “ I ask .you to allow that a nature 
which can do without help is greater than a nature which 
can not.” 

“ If the thing done were the same, I should allow it,” 
answered the curate ; “ but the things done will prove alto- 
gether different. And another thing to be noted is, that, 
while the need of help might indicate a lower nature, the 
capacity for receiving it must indicate a higher. The mere 
fact of being able to live and act in more meager spiritual 
circumstances, in itself proves nothing : it is not the highest 
nature that has the fewest needs. The highest nature is the 
one that has the most necessities, but the fewest of its own 
making. He is not the greatest man who is the most inde- 
pendent, but he who thirsts most after a conscious harmony 
with every element and portion of the mighty whole ; 
demands from every region thereof its influences to per- 
fect his individuality ; regards that individuality as his 
kingdom, his treasure, not to hold but to give ; sees 
in his Self the one thing he can devote, the one pre- 
cious means of freedom by its sacrifice, and that in no 
contempt or scorn, but in love to God and his children, 
the multitudes of his kind. By dying ever thus, ever thus 
losing his soul, he lives like God, and God knows him, and 
he knows God. This is too good to be grasped, but not 
too good to be true. The highest is that which needs the 
highest, the largest that which needs the most ; the finest 
and strongest that which to live must breath essential life, 
self-willed life, God Himself. It follows that it is not the 
largest or the strongest nature that will feel a loss the 
least. An ant will not gather a grain of corn the less that 
his mother is dead, while a boy will turn from his books and 
his play and his dinner because his bird is dead : is the ant, 
therefore, the stronger nature ? ” 

“ Is it not weak to be miserable ? ” said the doctor. 

“ Yes — without good cause,” answered the curate. “ But 
you do not know what it would be to me to lose my faith in 
my God. My misery would be a misery to which no assur- 
ance of immortality or of happiness could bring anything but 
tenfold misery — the conviction that I should never be good 
myself, never have any thing to love absolutely, never be 
able to make amends for the wrongs I had done. Call such 
a feeling selfish if you will : I can not help it. I can not 
count one fit for existence to whom such things would be no 
grief The worthy existence must hunger after good. The 


210 


PAUL FABER. 


largest nature must have the mightiest hunger. Who calls 
a man selfish because he is hungry ? He is selfish if he 
broods on the pleasures of eating, and would not go without 
his dinner for the sake of another ; but if he had no hunger, 
where would be the room for his self-denial ? Besides, in 
spiritual things, the only way to give them to your neighbors 
is to hunger after them yourself. There each man is a 
mouth to tl;ie body of the whole creation. It can not be 
selfishness to hunger and thirst after righteousness, which 
righteousness is just your duty to your God and your neigh- 
bor. If there be any selfishness in it, the very answer to 
your prayer will destroy it.” 

“ There you are again out of my region,” said Faber. 

But answer me one thing : is it not weak to desire 
happiness ? ” 

“ Yes ; if the happiness is poor and low,” rejoined Wing- 
fold. “ But the man who would choose even the grandeur 
of duty before the bliss of the truth, must be a lover of him- 
self. Such a man must be traveling the road to death. If 
there be a God, truth must be joy. If there be not, truth 
may be misery. — But, honestly, I know not one advanced 
Christian who tries to obey for the hope of Heaven or the 
fear of hell. Such ideas have long vanished from such a 
man. He loves God ; he loves truth ; he loves his fellow, 
and knows he must love him more. You judge of Chris- 
tianity either by those who are not true representatives of it, 
and are indeed, less of Christians than yourself ; or by 
others who, being intellectually inferior, perhaps even stupid, 
belie Christ with their dull theories concerning Him. Yet 
the latter may have in them a noble seed, urging them up 
heights to you at present unconceived and inconceivable ; 
while, in the meantime, some of them serve their genera- 
tion well, and do as much for those that are to come after 
as you do yourself.” 

“ There is always weight as well as force in what you 
urge. Wingfold,” returned Faber. “ Still it looks to me just 
a cunningly devised fable — I will not say of the priests, but 
of the human mind deceiving itself with its own hopes and 
desires.” 

“ It may well look such to those who are outside of it, 
and it must at length appear such to all who, feeling in it 
any claim upon them, yet do not put it to the test of their 
obedience.” 

“ Well, you have had your turn, and now we are having 
ours — you of the legends, we of the facts.” 


PAUL FABER. 


2II 


“ No,” said Wingfold, “ we have not had our turn, and you 
have been having yours for a far longer time than we. But 
if, as you profess, you are doing the truth you see, it belongs 
to my belief that you will come to see the truth you do not 
see. Christianity is not a failure ; for to it mainly is the 
fact owing, that here is a class of men which, believing in no 
God, yet believes in duty toward men. Look here : if 
Christianity be the outcome of human aspiration, the natural 
growth of the human soil, is it not strange it should be 
such an utter failure as it seems to you ? and as such a 
natural growth, it must be a failure, for if it were a success, 
must not you be the very one to see it ? If it is false, it is 
worthless, or an evil : where then is your law of develop- 
ment, if the highest result of that development is an evil to 
the nature and the race ? ” 

“ I do not grant it the highest result,” said Faber. It is 
a failure — a false blossom, with a truer to follow.” 

“To produce a superior architecture, poetry, music ? ” 

“ Perhaps not. But a better science.” 

“ Are the architecture and poetry and music parts of the 
failure ? ” 

“ Yes — but they are not altogether a failure, for they lay 
some truth at the root of them all. Now we shall see what 
will come of turning away from every thing we do not 
know'* 

“ That is not exactly what you mean, for that would be 
never to know any thing more. But the highest you have 
in view is immeasurably below what Christianity has always 
demanded of its followers.” 

“ But has never got from them, and never will. Look at the 
wars, the hatreds, to which your gospel has given rise ! Look 
at Calvin and poor Servetus ! Look at the strifes and divis- 
ions of our own day ! Look at the religious newspapers ! ” 

“ All granted. It is a chaos, the motions of whose organi- 
zation must be strife. The spirit of life is at war with 
the spasmatical body of death. If Christianity be not 
still in the process of development, it is the saddest of all 
failures.” 

“ The fact is. Wingfold, your prophet would have been 
King of the race if He had not believed in a God.” 

“ I dare not speak the answer that rises to my lips,” said 
Wingfold. “ But there is more truth in what you say than 
you think, and more of essential lie also. My answer is^ 
that the faith of Jesus in His God and Father is, even now, 


212 


PAUL FABER. 


saving me, setting me free from my one horror, selfishness ; 
making my life an unspeakable boon to me, letting me 
know its roots in the eternal and perfect ; giving me such 
love to my fellow, that I trust at last to love him as Christ 
has loved me. But I do not expect you to understand me. 
He in whom I believe said that a man must be born again to 
enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” 

The doctor laughed. 

“ You then ars one of the double-born, Wingfold ? ” he 
said. 

“ I believe, I think, I hope so,” replied the curate, very 
gravely. 

“ And you, Mr. Bevis ? ” 

I don’t know. I wish. I doubt,” answered the rector, 
with equal solemnity. 

“ Oh, never fear ! ” said Faber, with a quiet smile, and 
rising, left the clergymen together. 

But what a morning it was that came up after the storm ! 
All night the lightning had been flashing itself into peace, 
and gliding further and further away. Bellowing and growl- 
ing the thunder had crept with it ; but long after it could 
no more be heard, the lightning kept gleaming up, as if 
from a sea of flame behind the horizon. The sun brought 
a glorious day, and looked larger and mightier than before. 
To Helen, as she gazed eastward from her windov/, he 
seemed ascending his lofty pulpit to preach the story of 
the day named after him — the story of the Sun-day ; the 
rising again in splendor of the darkened and buried Sun of 
the universe, with whom all the worlds and all their hearts 
and suns arose. A light steam was floating up from the 
grass, and the raindrops were sparkling everywhere. The 
day had arisen from the bosom of the night ; peace and 
graciousness from the bosom of the storm ; she herself from 
the grave of her sleep, over which had lain the turf of the 
darkness ; and all was fresh life and new hope. And 
through it all, reviving afresh with every sign of Nature’s 
universal law of birth, was the consciousness that her life, 
her own self, was rising from the dead, was being new-born 
also. She had not far to look back to the time when all 
was dull and dead in her being : when the earthquake 
came, and the storm, and the fire ; and after them the still 
small voice, breathing rebuke, and hope, and strength. Her 
whole world was now radiant with expectation. It was 
through her husband the change had come to her, but he 


PAUL FABER. 


213 


was not the rock on which she built. For his sake she could 
go to hell — yea, cease to exist ; but there was One whom 
she loved more than him — the one One whose love was the 
self-willed cause of all love, who from that love had sent 
forth her husband and herself to love one another ; whose 
heart was the nest of their birth, the cradle of their 
growth, the rest of their being. Yea, more than her 
husband she loved Him, her elder Brother, by whom the 
Father had done it all, the Man who lived and died and 
rose again so many hundred years ago. In Him, the perfect 
One, she hoped for a perfect love to her husband, a perfect 
nature in herself. She knew how Faber would have mocked 
at such a love, the very existence of whose object she could 
not prove, how mocked at the notion that His life even now 
was influencing hers. She knew how he would say it was 
merely love and marriage that had wrought the change ; 
but while she recognized them as forces altogether divine, 
she knew that not only was the Son of Man behind them, 
but that it was her obedience to Him and her confidence in 
Him that had wrought the red heart of the change in her. 
She knew that she would rather break with her husband 
altogether, than to do one action contrary to the knowR 
mind and will of that Man. Faber would call her faith u 
mighty, perhaps a lovely illusion : her life was an active 
waiting for the revelation of its object in splendor before the 
universe. The world seemed to her a grand march of res- 
urrections — out of every sorrow springing the joy at its 
heart, without which it could not have been a sorrow ; out 
of the troubles, and evils, and sufferings, and cruelties that 
clouded its history, ever arising the human race, the sons of 
God, redeemed in Him who had been made subject to death 
that He might conquer Death for them and for his Father — 
a succession of mighty facts, whose meanings only God can 
evolve, only the obedient heart behold. 

On such a morning, so full of resurrection, Helen was 
only a little troubled not to be one of her husband’s congre- 
gation : she would take her New Testament, and spend the 
sunny day in the open air. In the evening he was coming, 
and would preach in the little chapel. If only Juliet might 
hear him too ! But she would not ask her to go. 

Juliet was better, for fatigue had compelled sleep. The 
morning had brought her little hope, however, no sense of res- 
urrection. A certain dead thing had begun to move in its 
coffin ; she was utterly alone with it, and it made the world 


214 


PAUL FABER. 


feel a tomb around her. Not all resurrections are the res- 
urrection of life, though in the end they will be found, even 
to the lowest birth of the power of the enemy, to have con- 
tributed thereto. She did not get up to breakfast ; Helen 
persuaded her to rest, and herself carried it to her. But 
she rose soon after, and declared herself quite well. 

The rector drove to Glaston in his dog-cart to read 
prayers. Helen went out into the park with her New Tes- 
tament and George Herbert. Poor Juliet was left with Mrs. 
Bevis, who happily could not be duller than usual, although 
it was Sunday. By the time the rector returned, bringing 
his curate with him, she was bored almost beyond endur- 
ance. She had not yet such a love of wisdom as to be able 
to bear with folly. The foolish and weak are the most easily 
disgusted with folly and weakness which is not of their own 
sort, and are the last to make allowances for them. To 
spend also the evening with the softly smiling old woman, 
who would not go across the grass after such a rain the 
night before, was a thing not to be contemplated. Juliet 
borrowed a pair of galoshes, and insisted on going to the 
chapel. In vain the rector and his wife dissuaded her. 
Neither Helen nor her husband said a word. 


CHAPTER XXXI 

A CONSCIENCE. 

The chapel in the park at Nestley, having as yet received 
no color, and having no organ or choir, was a cold, unin- 
teresting little place. It was neat, but had small beauty, 
and no history. Yet even already had begun to gather in 
the hearts of two or three of the congregation a feeling of 
quiet sacredness about it : some soft airs of the spirit-wind 
had been wandering through their souls as they sat there 
and listened. And a gentle awe, from old associations 
with lay worship, stole like a soft twilight over Juliet as she 
entered. Even the antral dusk of an old reverence may 
help to form the fitting mood through which shall slide un- 
hindered the still small voice that makes appeal to what of 
God is yet awake in the soul. There were present about a 
score of villagers, and the party from the house. 


PAUL FABER. 


215 


Clad in no vestments of office, but holding in his hand 
the New Testament, which was always held either there or in 
his pocket, Wingfold rose to speak. He read : 

“ Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees^ which is hypoc- 
risy, For there is nothing covered^ that shall not be revealed ; 
neither hid, that shall 7iot be known.'' 

Then at once he began to show them, in the simplest in- 
terpretation, that the hypocrite was one who pretended to 
be what he was not ; who tried or consented to look other 
and better than he was. That a man, from unwillingness 
to look at the truth concerning himself, might be but half- 
consciously assenting to the false appearance, would, he 
said, nowise serve to save him from whatever of doom was 
involved in this utterance of our Lord Concerning the crime. 
These words of explanation and caution premised, he 
began at the practical beginning, and spoke a few forceful 
things on the necessity of absolute truth as to fact in every 
communication between man and man, telling them that, so 
far as he could understand His words recorded, our Lord’s 
objection to swearing lay chiefly in this, that it encouraged 
untruthfulness, tending to make a man’s yea less than yea, 
his nay other than nay. He said that many people who 
told lies every day, would be shocked when they discovered 
that they were liars ; and that their lying must be dis- 
covered, for the Lord said so. Every untruthfulness was a 
passing hypocrisy, and if they would not come to be hypo- 
crites out and out, they must begin to avoid it by speaking 
every man the truth to his neighbor. If they did not be- 
gin at once to speak the truth, they must grow worse and 
worse liars. The Lord called hypocrisy leaven, because of 
its irresistible, perhaps as well its unseen, growth and 
spread ; he called it the leaven of the Pharisees, because it 
was the all-pervading quality of their being, and from them 
was working moral dissolution in the nation, eating like a 
canker into it, by infecting with like hypocrisy all who 
looked up to them. 

“ Is it not a strange drift, this of men,” said the curate, 
“ to hide what is, under the veil of what is not ? to seek 
refuge in lies, as if that which is not, could be an armor of 
adamant ? to run from the daylight for safety, deeper into 
the cave ? In the cave house the creatures of the night — 
the tigers and hyenas, the serpent and the old dragon of 
the dark ; in the light are true men and women, and the 
clear-eyed angels. But the reason is only too plain ; it is, 


2i6 


PAUL FABER. 


alas ! that they are themselves of the darkness and not of 
the light. They do not fear their own. They are more 
comfortable with the beasts of darkness than with the 
angels of light. They dread the peering of holy eyes into 
their hearts ; they feel themselves naked and fear to be 
ashamed, therefore cast the garment of hypocrisy about 
them. They have that in them so strange to the light that 
they feel it must be hidden from the eye of day, as a thing 
hideotis, that is, a thing to be hidden. But the hypocrisy is 
worse than all it would hide. That they have to hide again, 
as a more hideous thing still. 

“ God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning 
is revelation — a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing 
unto men of truth after truth. On and on, from fact to 
fact divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus, He 
unveils His very face. Then begins a fresh unveiling, for 
the very work of the Father is the work the Son Himself has 
to do — to reveal. His life was the unveiling of Himself, 
and the unveiling of the Son is still going on, and is that for 
the sake of which the world exists. When He is unveiled, 
that is, when we know the Son, we shall know the Father 
also. The whole of creation, its growth, its history, the 
gathering total of human existence, is an unveiling of the 
Father. He is the life, the eternal life, the Only. I see it — 
ah ! believe me — I see it as I can not say it. Frj6m month 
to month it grows upon me. The lovely home-light, the 
one essence of peaceful being, is God Himself. 

“ He loves light and not darkness, therefore shines, there- 
fore reveals. True, there are infinite gulfs in Him, into 
which our small vision can not pierce, but they are gulfs of 
light, and the truths there are invisible only through excess 
of their own clarity. There is a darkness that comes of 
effulgence, and the most veiling of all veils is the light. 
That for which the eye exists is light, but through 
light no human eye can pierce. — I find myself beyond 
my depth. I am ever beyond my depth, afloat in an 
infinite sea ; but the depth of the sea knows me, for 
the ocean of my being is God. — What I would say is 
this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, 
but because the truth is too glorious for our vision. The 
effulgence of Himself God veiled that He might unveil it — 
in his Son. Inter-universal spaces, aeons, eternities — what 
word of vastness you can find or choose — take unfathom- 
able darkness itself, if you will, to express the infinitude of 


PAUL FABER. 


217 


God, that original splendor existing only to the conscious- 
ness of God Himself — I say He hides it not, but is revealing 
it ever, forever, at all cost of labor, yea of pain to Himself. 
His whole creation is a sacrificing of Himself to the being 
and well-being of His little ones, that, being wrought out at 
last into partakers of His divine nature, that nature may be 
revealed in them to their divinest bliss. He brings hidden 
things out of the light of His own being into the light of 
ours. 

But see how different we are — until we learn of Him ! 
See the tendency of man to conceal his treasures, to claim 
even truth as his own by discovery, to hide it and be proud 
of it, gloating over that which he thinks he has in himself, 
instead of groaning after the infinite of God ! We would 
be forever heaping together possessions, dragging things 
into the cave of our finitude, our individual self, not per- 
ceiving that the things which pass that dreariest of doors, 
whatever they may have been, are thenceforth but ‘ straws, 
small sticks, and dust of the floor.’ When a man would 
have a truth in thither as if it were of private interpretation, 
he drags in only the bag which the truth, remaining out- 
side, has burst and left. 

“ Nowhere are such children of darkness born as in the 
caves of hypocrisy ; nowhere else can a man revel with 
such misshapen hybrids of religion and sin. But, as one 
day will be found, I believe, a strength of physical light be- 
fore which even solid gold or blackest marble becomes trans- 
parent, so is there a spiritual light before which all veils of 
falsehood shall shrivel up and perish and cease to hide ; so 
that, in individual character, in the facts of being, in 
the densest of Pharisaical hypocrisy, there is nothing 
covered that shall not be revealed, nothing hid that shall 
not be known. 

“ If then, brother or sister, thou hast that which would be 
hidden, make haste and drag the thing from its covert into 
the presence of thy God, thy Light, thy Saviour, that, if it be 
in itself good, it may be cleansed ; if evil, it may be stung 
through and through with the burning arrows of truth, and 
perish in glad relief. For the one bliss of an evil thing is to 
perish and pass ; the evil thing, and that alone, is the natural 
food of Death — nothing else will agree with the monster. If 
we have such foul things, I say, within the circumference of 
our known selves, we must confess the charnel-fact to our- 
selves and to God ; and if there be any one else who has a 


2i8 


PAUL FABER. 


claim to know it, to that one also must we confess, casting 
out the vile thing that we may be clean. Let us make haste 
to open the doors of our lips and the windows of our hu- 
mility, to let out the demon of darkness, and in the angels of 
light — so abjuring the evil. Be sure that concealment is 
utterly, absolutely hopeless. If we do not thus ourselves 
open our house, the day will come when a roaring blast of 
His wind, or the flame of His keen lightning, will destroy 
every defense of darkness, and set us shivering before the 
universe in our naked vileness ; for there is nothing covered 
that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. 
Ah ! well for man that he can not hide ! What vaults of 
uncleanness, what sinks of dreadful horrors, would not the 
souls of some of us grow ! But for every one of them, as 
for the universe, comes the day of cleansing. Happy they 
who hasten it ! who open wide the doors, take the broom in 
the hand, and begin to sweep ! The dust may rise in clouds ; 
the offense may be great ; the sweeper may pant and choke, 
and weep, yea, grow faint and sick with self-disgust ; but 
the end will be a clean house, and the light and wind of 
Heaven shining and blowing clear and fresh and sweet 
through all its chambers. Better so, than have a hurricane 
from God burst in doors and windows, and sweep from his 
temple with the besom of destruction every thing that loveth 
and maketh a lie. Brothers, sisters, let us be clean. The 
light and the air around us are God’s vast purifying furnace ; 
out into it let us cast all hypocrisy. Let us be open-hearted, 
and speak every man the truth to his neighbor. Amen.” 

The faces of the little congregation had been staring all 
the time at the speaker’s, as the flowers of a little garden 
stare at the sun. Like a white lily that had begun to fade, 
that of Juliet had drawn the eyes of the curate, as the 
whitest spot always will. But it had drawn his heart also. 
Had her troubles already begun, poor girl? he thought. 
Had the sweet book of marriage already begun to give out 
its bitterness ? 

It was not just so. Marriage was good to her still. Not 
yet, though but a thing of this world, as she and her husband 
were agreed, had it begun to grow stale and wearisome. She 
was troubled. It was with no reaction against the opinions 
to which she had practically yielded ; but not the less had 
the serpent of the truth bitten her, for it can bite through 
the gauze of whatever opinions or theories. Conscious, per- 
sistent wrong may harden and thicken the gauze to a quilted 


PAUL FABER. 


219 


armor, but even through that the sound of its teeth may 
wake up Don Worm, the conscience, and then is the baser 
nature between the fell incensed points of mighty opposites. 
It avails a man little to say he does not believe this or that, 
if the while he can not rest because of some word spoken. 
True speech, as well as true scripture, is given by inspiration 
of God ; it goes forth on the wind of the Spirit, with the 
ministry of fire. The sun will shine, and the wind will blow, 
the floods will beat, and the fire will burn, until the yielding 
soul, re-born into childhood, spreads forth its hands and 
rushes to the Father. 

It was dark, and Juliet took the offered arm of the rector 
and walked with him toward the house. Both were silent, 
for both had been touched. The rector was busy tumbling 
over the contents now of this now of that old chest and 
cabinet in the lumber-room of his memory, seeking for things 
to get rid of by holy confession ere the hour of proclamation 
should arrive. He was finding little yet beyond boyish esca- 
pades, and faults and sins which he had abjured ages ago 
and almost forgotten. His great sin, of which he had already 
repented, and was studying more and more to repent — that 
of undertaking holy service for the sake of the loaves and the 
fishes — then, in natural sequence, only taking the loaves and 
the fishes, and doing no service in return, did not come under 
the name of hypocrisy, being indeed a crime patent to the 
universe, even when hidden from himself. When at length 
the heavy lids of his honest sleepy-eyed nature arose, and he 
saw the truth of his condition, his dull, sturdy soul had gath- 
ered itself like an old wrestler to the struggle, and hardly 
knew what was required of it, or what it had to overthrow, 
till it stood panting over its adversary. 

Juliet also was occupied — with no such search as the rec- 
tor’s, hardly even with what could be called thought, but 
with something that must either soon cause the keenest 
thought, or at length a spiritual callosity : somewhere in her 
was a motion, a something turned and twisted, ceased and 
began again, boring like an auger ; or was it a creature that 
tried to sleep, but ever and anon started awake, and with 
fretful claws pulled at its nest in the fibers of her heart ? 

The curate and his wife talked softly all the way back to 
the house. 

“ Do you really think,” said Helen, that every fault one 
has ever committed will one day be trumpeted out to the 
universe ? ” 


220 


PAUL FABER. 


‘‘That were hardly worth the while of the universe,” an- 
swered her husband. “ Such an age-long howling of evil 
stupidities would be enough to turn its brain with ennui and 
disgust. Nevertheless, the hypocrite will certainly know 
himself discovered and shamed, and unable any longer to 
hide himself from his neighbor. His past deeds also will be 
made plain to all who, for further ends of rectification, re- 
quire to know them. Shame will then, I trust, be the first 
approach of his redemption.” 

Juliet, for she was close behind them, heard his words and 
shuddered. 

“ You are feeling it cold, Mrs. Faber,” said the rector, 
and, with the fatherly familiarity of an old man, drew her 
cloak better around her. 

“ It is not cold,” she faltered ; “ but somehow the night- 
air always makes me shiver.” 

The rector pulled a muffler from his coat-pocket, and laid 
it like a scarf on her shoulders. 

“ How kind you are ! ” she murmured. “ I don’t de- 
serve it.” 

“ Who deserves any thing ? ” said the rector. “ I less, I 
am sure, than any one I know. Only, if you will believe my 
curate, you have but to ask, and have what you need.” 

“ I wasn’t the first to say that, sir,” Wingfold struck in, 
turning his head over his shoulder. 

“ I know that, my boy,” answered Mr. Bevis ; “ but you 
were the first to make me want to find its true. — I say, Mrs. 
Faber, what if it should turn out after all, that there was a 
grand treasure hid in your field and mine, that we never got 
the good of because we didn’t believe it was there and dig 
for it ? What if this scatter-brained curate of mine should 
be right when he talks so strangely about our living in the 
midst of calling voices, cleansing fires, baptizing dews, and 
won't hearken, won’t be clean, won’t give up our sleep and 
our dreams for the very bliss for which we cry out in them ! ” 

The old man had stopped, taken off his hat, and turned 
toward her. He spoke with such a strange solemnity of 
voice that it could hardly have been believed his by those 
who knew him as a judge of horses and not as a reader of 
prayers. The other pair had stopped also. 

“ I should call it very hard,” returned Juliet, “ to come so 
near it and yet miss it.” 

“ Especially to be driven so near it against one’s will, and 
yet succeed in getting past without touching it,” said the 


PAUL FABER. 


221 


curate, with a flavor of asperity. His wife gently pinched 
his arm, and he was ashamed. 

When they reached home, Juliet went straight to bed— 
or at least to her room for the night. 

“ I say. Wingfold,” remarked the rector, as they sat alone 
after supper, “ that sermon of yours was above your con- 
gregation.” 

“ I am afraid you are right, sir. I am sorry. But if you 
had seen their faces as I did, perhaps you would have modi- 
fied the conclusion.” 

“ I am very glad I heard it, though,” said the rector. 

They had more talk, and when Wingfold went up stairs, 
he found Helen asleep. Annoyed with himself for having 
spoken harshly to Mrs. Faber, and more than usually har- 
assed by a sense of failure in his sermon, he threw himself 
into a chair, and sat brooding and praying till the light 
began to appear. Out of the reeds shaken all night in the 
wind, rose with the morning this bird : — 

THE SMOKE. 

Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar, 

But can not get the wood to burn ; 

It hardly flares ere it begins to falter, 

And to the dark return. 

Old sap, or night-fallen dew, has damped the fuel ; 

In vain my breath would flame provoke ; 

Yet see — at every poor attempt’s renewal 
To Thee ascends the smoke. 

’Tis all I have — smoke, failure, foiled endeavor. 

Coldness, and ‘doubt, and palsied lack ; 

Such as I have I send Thee ; — perfect Giver, 

Send Thou Thy lightning back. 


In the morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Helen’s 
ponies were brought to the door, she and Juliet got into the 
carriage. Wingfold jumped up behind, and they returned to 
Glaston. Little was said on the way, and Juliet seemed 
strangely depressed. They left her at her own door. 

What did that look mean ? ” said Wingfold to his wife, 
the moment they were round the corner of Mr. Drew’s 
shop. 

“ You saw it then ? ” returned Helen. I did not think 
you had been so quick.” 


222 


PAUL FABER. 


“ I saw what I could not help taking for relief,*' said the 
curate, “ when the maid told her that her husband was not 
at home.” 

They said no more till they reached the rectory, where 
Helen followed her husband to his study. 

“ He can’t have turned tyrant already ! ” she said, resum- 
ing the subject of Juliet’s look. “ But she’s afraid of him.” 

“ It did look like it,” rejoined her husband. “ Oh, Helen, 
what a hideous thing fear of her husband must be for a 
woman, who has to spend not her days only in his presence, 
but her nights by his side ! I do wonder so many women 
dare to be married. They would need all to have clean 
consciences.” 

“ Or no end of faith in their husbands,” said Helen. “ If 
ever I come to be afraid of you, it will be because I have 
done something very wrong indeed.” 

“ Don’t be too sure of that, Helen,” returned AVingfold. 
‘‘ There are very decent husbands as husbands go, who are 
yet unjust, exacting, selfish. The most devoted of wives 
are sometimes afraid of the men they yet consider the very 
models of husbands. It is a brutal shame that a woman 
should feel afraid, or even uneasy, instead of safe, beside 
her husband.” 

“You are always on the side of the women, Thomas,” 
said his wife ; “ and I love you for it somehow — I can’t tell 
why.” 

“You make a mistake to begin with, my dear : you don’t 
love me because I am on the side of the women, but because 
I am on the side of the wronged. If the man happened to 
be the injured party, and I took the side of the woman, you 
would be down on me like an avalanche.” 

“ I dare say. But there is something more in it. I don’t 
think I am altogether mistaken. You don’t talk like most 
men. They have such an ugly way of asserting superior- 
ity, and sneering at women ! That you never do, and as a 
woman I am grateful for it.” 

The same afternoon Dorothy Drake paid a visit to Mrs. 
Faber, and was hardly seated before the feeling that some- 
thing was wrong arose in her. Plainly Juliet was suffering 
^from some cause she wished to conceal. Several times 
she seemed to turn faint, hurriedly fanned herself, and drew 
a deep breath. Once she rose hastily and went to the win- 
dow, as if struggling with some oppression, and returned 
looking very pale. 


PAUL FABER. 


223 


Dorothy was frightened. 

“ What is the matter, dear ? ” she said. 

“ Nothing,” answered Juliet, trying to smile. ‘‘Perhaps 
I took a little cold last night,” she added with a shiver. 

“ Have you told your husband ? ” asked Dorothy. 

“ I haven’t seen him since Saturday,” she answered quietly, 
but a pallor almost deathly overspread her face. 

“ I hope he will soon be home,” said Dorothy. “ Mind 
you tell him how you feel the instant he comes in.” 

Juliet answered with a smile, but that smile Dorothy 
never forgot. It haunted her all the way home. When she 
entered h^r chamber, her eyes fell upon the petal of a 
monthly rose, which had dropped from the little tree in her 
window, and lay streaked and crumpled on the black earth 
of the flower-pot : by one of those queer mental vagaries in 
which the imagination and the logical faculty seem to 
combine to make sport of the reason — “ How is it that smile 
has got here before me ? ” she said to herself. 

She sat down and thought. Could it be that Juliet had, 
like herself, begun to find there could be no peace without 
the knowledge of an absolute peace ? If it were so, and 
she would but let her know it, then, sisters at least in sorrow 
and search, they would together seek the Father of their 
spirits, if haply they might find Him ; together they would 
cry to Him — and often : it might be He would hear them, 
and reveal Himself. Her heart was sore all day, thinking 
of that sad face. Juliet, whether she knew it or not, was, 
like herself, in trouble because she had no God. 

The conclusion shows that Dorothy was far from hope- 
less. That she could believe the lack of a God was the 
cause unknown to herself of her friend’s depression, 
implies an assurance of the human need of a God, and a 
hope there might be One to be found. For herself, if she 
could but find Him, she felt there would be nothing but bliss 
evermore. Dorothy then was more hopeful than she her- 
self knew. I doubt if absolute hopelessness is ever born 
save at the word. Depart from me. Hope springs with us 
from God Himself, and, however down-beaten, however sick 
and nigh unto death, will evermore lift its head and rise 
again. 

She could say nothing to her father. She loved him — 
oh, how dearly ! and trusted him, where she could trust 
him at all ! — oh, how perfectly ! but she had no confidence 
in his understanding of herself. The main cause whence 


224 


PAUL FABER. 


arose his insufficiency and her lack of trust was, that all his 
faith in God was as yet scarcely more independent of 
thought-forms, word-shapes, dogma and creed, than that 
of the Catholic or Calvinist. How few are there whose 
faith is simple and mighty in the Father of Jesus Christ, 
waiting to believe all that He will reveal to them ! How 
many of those who talk of faith as the one needful thing, 
will accept as sufficient to the razing of the wails of par- 
tition between you and them, your heartiest declaration 
that you believe in Him with the whole might of your 
nature, lay your soul bare to the revelation of His spirit, 
and stir up your will to obey Him ? — And then comes 
your temptation — to exclude, namely, from your love and 
sympathy the weak and boisterous brethren who, after the 
fashion possible to them, believe in your Lord, because they 
exclude you, and put as little confidence in your truth as in 
your insight. If you do know more of Christ than they, 
upon you lies the heavier obligation to be true to them, as 
was St. Paul to the Judaizing Christians, whom these so 
much resemble, who were his chief hindrance in the work 
his Master had given him to do. In Christ we must forget 
Paul and Apollos and Cephas, pope and bishop and pastor 
and presbyter, creed and interpretation and theory. Care- 
less of their opinions, we must be careful of themselves — 
careful that we have salt in ourselves, and that the salt lose 
not its savor, that the old man, dead through Christ, shall 
not, vampire-like, creep from his grave and suck the blood 
of the saints, by whatever name they be called, or however 
little they may yet have entered into the freedom of the 
gospel that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. 

How was Dorothy to get nearer to Juliet, find out her 
trouble, and comfort her t 

“ Alas ! ” she said to herself, “ what a thing is marriage in 
separating friends 1 


CHAPTER XXXII. 


THE OLD HOUSE OF GLASTON. 

The same evening Dorothy and her father walked to the 
Old House. Already the place looked much changed. The 
very day the deeds were signed, Mr. Drake, who was not the 
man to postpone action a moment after the time for it was 
come, had set men at work upon the substantial repairs. 
The house was originally so well built that these were not 
so heavy as might have been expected, and when completed 
they made little show of change. The garden, however, 
looked quite another thing, for it had lifted itself up from 
the wilderness in which it was suffocated, reviving like a 
repentant soul reborn. Under its owner’s keen watch, its 
ancient plan had been rigidly regarded, its ancient features 
carefully retained. The old bushes were well trimmed, but 
as yet nothing live, except weeds, had been uprooted. The 
hedges and borders, of yew and holly and box, tall and 
broad, looked very bare and broken and patchy ; but now 
that the shears had, after so long ^ season of neglect, 
removed the gathered shade, the naked stems and branches 
would again send out the young shoots of the spring, a new 
birth would begin everywhere, and the old garden would 
dawn anew. For all his lack of sympathy with the older 
forms of religious economy in the country, a thing, alas ! 
too easy to account for, the minister yet loved the past and 
felt its mystery. He said once in a sermon — and it gave 
offense to more than one of his deacons, for they scented in 
it Germanism ^ — The love of the past, the desire of the 
future, and the enjoyment of the present, make an eternity, 
in which time is absorbed, its lapse lapses, and man par- 
takes of the immortality of his Maker. In each present 
personal being, we have the whole past of our generation 
inclosed, to be re-developed with endless difference in each 
individuality. Hence perhaps it comes that, every now and 
then, into our consciousnesses float strange odors of feeling, 
strange tones as of bygone affections, strange glimmers as 
of forgotten truths, strange mental sensations of indescriba- 
ble sort and texture. Friends, I should be a terror to 
myself, did I not believe that wherever my dim conscious- 
ness may come to itself, God is there.” 


226 


PAUL FABER. 


Dorothy would have hastened the lighter repairs inside 
the house as well, so as to get into it as soon as possible ; 
but her father very wisely argued that it would be a pity to 
get the house in good condition, and then, as soon as they 
went into it, and began to find how it could be altered 
better to suit their tastes and necessities, have to destroy a 
great part of what had just been done. His plan, therefore, 
was to leave the house for the winter, now it was weather- 
tight, and with the first of the summer partly occupy it as it 
was, find out its faults and capabilities, and have it grad- 
ually repaired and altered to their minds and requirements. 
There would in this way be plenty of time to talk about 
every thing, even to the merest suggestion of fancy, and dis- 
cover what they would really like. 

But ever since the place had been theirs, Dorothy had 
been in the habit of going almost daily to the house, with 
her book and her work, sitting now in this, now in that 
empty room, undisturbed by the noises of the workmen, 
chiefly outside : the foreman was a member of her father’s 
church, a devout man, and she knew every one of his peo- 
ple. She had taken a strange fancy to those empty rooms : 
perhaps she felt them like her own heart, waiting for some- 
thing to come and fill them with life. Nor was there any 
thing to prevent her, though the work was over for a time, 
from indulging herself in going there still, as often as she 
pleased, and she would remain there for hours, sometimes 
nearly the whole day. In her present condition of mind 
and heart, she desired and needed solitude : she was one of 
those who when troubled rush from their fellows, and, urged 
by the human instinct after the divine, seek refuge in lone- 
liness — the cave on Horeb, the top of Mount Sinai, the 
closet with shut door — any lonely place where, unseen, and 
dreading no eye, the heart may call aloud to the God hid- 
den behind the veil of the things that do appear. 

How different, yet how fit to merge in a mutual sympathy, 
were the thoughts of the two, as they wandered about the 
place that evening ! Dorothy was thinking her commonest 
thought — how happy she could be if only she knew there 
was a Will central to the universe, willing all that came to 
her — good or seeming-bad — a Will whom she might love 
and thank for all things. He would be to her no God whom 
she could thank only when He sent her what was pleasant. 
She must be able to thank Him for every thing, or she could 
thank Him for nothing. 


PAUL FABER. 


227 


Her father was saying to himself he could not have 
believed the lifting from his soul of such a gravestone of 
debt, would have made so little difference to his happiness. 
He fancied honest Jones, the butcher, had more mere 
pleasure from the silver snuff-box he had given him, than he 
had himself from his fortune. Relieved he certainly was, 
but the relief was not happiness. His debt had been the 
stone that blocked up the gate of Paradise : the stone was 
rolled away, but the gate was not therefore open. He 
seemed for the first time beginning to understand what he 
had so often said, and in public too, and had thought he 
understood, that God Himself, and not any or all of His gifts, 
is the life of a man. He had got rid of the dread imagina- 
tion that God had given him the money in anger, as He had 
given the Israelites the quails, nor did he find that the pos- 
session formed any barrier between him and God : his 
danger now seemed that of forgetting the love of the 
Giver in his anxiety to spend the gift according to His 
will. 

“ You and I ought to be very happy, my love,” he said, 
as now they were walking home. 

He had often said so before, and Dorothy had held her 
peace ; but now, with her eyes on the ground, she rejoined, 
in a low, rather broken voice, 

“ Why, papa ? ” 

“ Because we are lifted above the anxiety that was crush- 
ing us into the very mud,” he answered, with surprise at her 
question. 

“ It never troubled me so much as all that,” she answered. 
“ It is a great relief to see you free from it, father ; but 
otherwise, I can not say that it has made much difference to 
me.” 

“ My dear Dorothy,” said the minister, “ it is time we 
should understand each other. Your state of mind has for 
a long time troubled me ; but while debt lay so heavy upon 
me, I could give my attention to nothing else. Why should 
there be any thing but perfect confidence between a father 
and daughter who belong to each other alone in all the 
world ? Tell me what it is that so plainly oppresses you. 
What prevents you from opening your heart to me? You 
can not doubt my love,” 

“ Never for one moment, father,” she answered, almost 
eagerly, pressing to her heart the arm on which she leaned. 

I know I am safe with you because I am yours, and yet 


228 


PAUL FABER. 


somehow I can not get so close to you as I would. Some- 
thing comes between us, and prevents me.” 

“ What is it, my child ? I will do all and every thing I 
can to remove it.” 

“ You, dear father! I don’t believe ever child had such 
a father.” 

“ Oh yes, my dear ! many have had better fathers, but 
none better than I hope one day by the grace of God to be 
to you. I am a poor creature, Dorothy, but I love you as 
my own soul. You are the blessing of my days, and my 
thoughts brood over you in the night : it would be in utter 
content, if I only saw you happy. If your face were 
acquainted with smiles, my heart would be acquainted 
with gladness.” 

For a time neither said any thing more. The silent 
tears were streaming from Dorothy’s eyes. At length she 
spoke. 

“ I wonder if I could tell you what it is without hurting 
you, father 1 ” she said. 

‘‘ I can hear any thing from you, my child,” he answered. 

Then I will try. But I do not think I shall ever quite 
know my father on earth, or be quite able to open my heart 
to him, until I have found my Father in Heaven.” 

“ Ah, my child ! is it so with you ? Do you fear you have 
not yet given yourself to the Saviour ? Give yourself now. 
His arms are ever open to receive you.” 

“ That is hardly the point, father. — Will you let me ask 
you any question I please ? ” 

“ Assuredly, my child.” He always spoke, though quite 
unconsciously, with a little of the ex-cathedral tone. 

“ Then tell me, father, are you just as sure of God as 
you are of me standing here before you ? ” 

She had stopped and turned, and stood looking him full 
in the face with wide, troubled eyes. 

Mr. Drake was silent. Hateful is the professional, con- 
temptible is the love of display, but in his case they floated 
only as vapors in the air of a genuine soul. He was a true 
man, and as he could not sayy^j, neither would he hide his 
no in a multitude of words — at least to his own daughter : 
he was not so sure of God as he was of that daughter, with 
those eyes looking straight into his ! Could it be that he 
never had believed in God at all ? The thought went 
through him with a great pang. It was as if the moon 
grew dark above him, and the earth withered under his 


PAUL FABER. 


229 


feet. He stood before his child like one whose hypocrisy 
had been proclaimed from the housetop. 

“ Are you vexed with me, father ? ” said Dorothy sadly. 

‘‘ No, my child,” answered the minister, in a voice of 
unnatural composure. “ But you stand before me there 
like the very thought started out of my soul, alive and 
visible, to question its own origin.” 

“ Ah, father ! ” cried Dorothy, “ let us question our 
origin.” 

The minister never even heard the words. 

That very doubt, embodied there in my child, has, I 
now know, been haunting me, dogging me behind, ever since 
I began to teach others,” he said, as if talking in his sleep. 
“ Now it looks me in the face. Am I myself to be a cast- 
away ? — Dorothy, I am no^.sure of God — not as I am sure 
of you, my darling.” 

He stood silent. His ear expected a low-voiced, sorrow- 
ful reply. He started at the tone of gladness in which 
Dorothy cried — 

“ Then, father, there is henceforth no cloud between us, 
for we are in the same cloud together ! It does not divide 
us, it only brings us closer to each other. Help me, father : 
I am trying hard to find God. At the same time, I confess 
I would rather not find Him, than find Him such as I have 
sometimes heard you represent Him.” 

“ It may well be,” returned her father — the ex-cathedral, 
the professional tone had vanished utterly for the time, and 
he spoke with the voice of an humble, true man — “ it may 
well be that I have done Him wrong ; for since now at my 
age I am compelled to allow that I am not sure of Him, 
what more likely than that I may have been cherishing 
wrong ideas concerning Him, and so not looking in the 
right direction for finding Him ? ” 

“ Where did you get your notions of God, father — those, 
I mean, that you took with you to the pulpit ? ” 

A year ago even, if he had been asked the same question, 
he would at once have answered, “ From the Word of God ;” 
but now he hesitated, and minutes passed before he began a 
reply. For he saw now that it was not from the Bible he 
had gathered them, whence soever they had come at first. He 
pondered and searched — and found that the real answer 
eluded him, hiding itself in a time beyond his earliest mem- 
ory. It seemed plain, therefore, that the source whence 
first he began to draw those notions, right or wrong, must 


230 


PAUL FABER. 


be the talk and behavior of the house in which he was born, 
the words and carriage of his father and mother and their 
friends. Next source to that came the sermons he heard on 
Sundays, and the books given him to read. The Bible was one 
of those books, but from the first he read it through the notions 
with which his mind was already vaguely filled, and with the 
comments of his superiors around him. Then followed the 
books recommended at college, this author and that, and the 
lectures he heard there upon the attributes of God and the 
plan of salvation. The spirit of commerce in the midst of 
which he had been bred, did not occur to him as one of the 
sources. 

But he had perceived enough. He opened his mouth and 
bravely answered her question as well as he could, not giv- 
ing the Bible as the source from which he had taken any one 
of the notions of God he had been in the habit of presenting. 

“ But mind,” he added, “ I do not allow that therefore 
my ideas must be incorrect. If they be second-hand, they 
may yet be true. I do admit that where they have con- 
tinued only second-hand, they can have been of little value 
to me.” 

“ What you allow, then, father,” said Dorothy, is that 
you have yourself taken none of your ideas direct from the 
fountain-head ? ” 

“ I am afraid I must confess it, my child — with this modi- 
fication, that I have thought many of them over a good deal, 
and altered some of them not a little to make them fit the 
molds of truth in my mind.” 

“ I am so glad, father ! ” said Dorothy. I was posi- 
tively certain, from what I knew of you — which is more 
than any one else in this world, I do believe — that some of 
the things you said concerning God never could have risen 
in your own mind.” 

“ They might be in the Bible for all that,” said the minis- 
ter, very anxious to be and speak the right thing. A 
man’s heart is not to be trusted for correct notions of 
God.” 

Nor yet for correct interpretation of the Bible, I should 
think,” said Dorothy. 

“True, my child,” answered her father with a sigh, 
“ — except as it be already a Godlike heart. Jhe Lord says a 
bramble-bush can not bring forth grapes.” 

“ The notions you gathered of God from other** people, 
must have come out of their hearts, father ? ” 


PAUL FABER. 


231 


“ Out of somebody’s heart ? ” 

** Just so,” answered Dorothy. 

“ Go on, my child,” said her father. Let me understand 
clearly your drift.” 

“ I have heard Mr. Wingfold say,” returned Dorothy, 
that however men may have been driven to form their 
ideas of God before Christ came, no man can, with thorough 
honesty, take the name of a Christian, whose ideas of the 
Father of men are gathered from any other field than the 
life, thought, words, deeds, of the only Son of that Father. 
He says it is not from the Bible as a book that we are to 
draw our ideas of God, but from the living Man into whose 
presence that book brings us. Who is alive now, and gives 
His spirit that they who read about Him may understand 
what kind of being He is, and why He did as He did, and 
know Him, in some possible measure, as He knows Himself. 
— I can only repeat the lesson like a child.” 

“ I suspect,” returned the minister, “that I have been 
greatly astray. But after this, we will seek our Father 
together, in our Brother, Jesus Christ.” 

It was the initiation of a daily lesson together in the New 
Testament, which, while it drew their hearts closer to each 
other, drew them, with growing delight, nearer and nearer 
to the ideal of humanity, Jesus Christ, in whom shines the 
glory of its Father. 

A man may look another in the fctce for a hundred years 
and not know him. Men have looked Jesus Christ in the 
face, and not known either Him or his Father. It was need- 
ful that He should appear, to begin the knowing of Him, but 
speedily was His visible presence taken away, that it might 
not become, as assuredly it would have become, a veil to 
hide from men the Father of their spirits. Do you long for 
the assurance of some sensible sign ? Do you ask why no 
intellectual proof is to be had ? I tell you that such would 
but delay, perhaps altogether impair for you, that better, 
that best, that only vision, into which at last your w'orld 
must blossom — such a contact, namely, with the heart of 
God Himself, such a perception of His being, and His abso- 
lute oneness with you, the child of His thought, the indi- 
viduality softly parted from His spirit, yet living still and 
only by His presence and love, as, by its own radiance, will 
sweep doubt away forever. Being then in the light and 
knowing it, the lack of intellectual proof concerning that 
which is too high for it, will trouble you no more than 



232 


PAUL FABER. 


would your inability to silence a metaphysician who declared 
that you had no real existence. It is for the sake of such 
vision as God would give that you are denied such vision as 
you would have. The Father of our spirits is not content 
that we should know Him as we now know each other. There 
is a better, closer, nearer than any human way of knowing, 
and to that He is guiding us across all the swamps of our 
unteachableness, the seas of our faithlessness, the desert of 
our ignorance. It is so very hard that we should have to wait 
for that which we can not yet receive ? Shall we complain 
of the shadows cast upon our souls by the hand and the 
napkin polishing their mirrors to the receiving of the more 
excellent glory ! Have patience, children of the Father. 
Pray always and do not faint. The mists and the storms 
and the cold will pass — the sun and the sky are for ever- 
more. There were no volcanoes and no typhoons but for 
the warm heart of the earth, the soft garment of the air, 
and the lordly sun over all. The most loving of you can 
not imagine how one day the love of the Father will make 
you love even your own. 

Much trustful talk passed between father and daughter 
as they walked home : they were now nearer to each other 
than ever in their lives before. 

“ You don’t mind my coming out here alone, papa ? ” said 
Dorothy, as, after a little chat with the gate-keeper, they 
left the park. “ I have of late found it so good to be alone ! 

I think I am beginning to learn to think.” 

“ Do in every thing just as you please, my child,” said her 
father. I can have no objection to what you see good. 
Only don’t be so late as to make me anxious.” 

“ I like coming early,” said Dorothy. “ These lovely 
mornings make me feel as if the struggles of life were over, 
and only a quiet old age were left.” 

The father looked anxiously at his daughter. Was she 
going to leave him ? It smote him to the heart that he had 
done so little to make her life a blessed one. How hard no 
small portion of it had been ! How worn and pale she 
looked ! Why did she not show fresh and bright like other 
young women — Mrs. Faber for instance ? He had not 
guided her steps into the way of peace ! At all events he 
had not led her home to the house of wisdom and rest ! 
Too good reason why — he had not himself yet found that 
home ! Henceforth, for her sake as well as his own, he 
would besiege the heavenly grace with prayer. * 


PAUL FABER. 


233 


The opening of his heart in confessional response to his 
daughter, proved one of those fresh starts in the spiritual 
life, of which a man needs so many as he climbs to the 
heavenly gates. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

PAUL FABEr’s dressing-room. 

Faber did not reach home till a few minutes before the 
dinner hour. He rode into the stable-yard, entered the 
house by the surgery, and went straight to his dressing- 
room ; for the roads were villianous, and Ruber’s large feet 
had made a wonderful sight of his master, who re- 
spected his wife’s carpet. At the same time he hoped, as it 
was so near dinner-time, to find her in her chamber. She 
had, however, already made her toilet, and was waiting his 
return in the drawing-room. Her heart made a false motion 
and stung her when she heard his steps pass the door and 
go up stairs, for generally he came to greet her the moment 
he entered the house. — Had he seen any body ! — Had he 
heard any thing ? It was ten dreadful minutes before he came 
down, but he entered cheerily, with the gathered warmth of 
two days of pent-up affection. She did her best to meet 
him as if nothing had happened. For indeed what had 
happened — except her going to church ? If nothing had 
taken place since she saw him — since she knew him — why 
such perturbation ? Was marriage a slavery of the very 
soul, in which a wife was bound to confess every thing to 
her husband, even to her most secret thoughts and feelings ? 
Or was a husband lord not only over the present and future 
of his wife, but over her past also ? Was she bound to dis- 
close every thing that lay in that past ? If Paul made no 
claim upon her beyond the grave, could he claim back upon 
the dead past before he knew her, a period over which she 
had now no more control than over that when she would be 
but a portion of the material all ? 

But whatever might be Paul’s theories of marriage or claims 
upon his wife, it was enough for her miserable unrest that 
she was what is called a living soul, with a history, and what 
has come to be called a conscience — a something, that is, as 


234 


PAUL FABER. 


most people regard it, which has the power, and uses it, of 
making uncomfortable. 

The existence of such questions as I have indicated re- 
veals that already between her and him there showed space, 
separation, non-contact: Juliet was too bewildered with 
misery to tell whether it was a cleft of a hair’s breadth, or a 
gulf across which no cry could reach ; this moment it 
seemed the one, the next the other. The knowledge which 
caused it had troubled her while he sought her love, had 
troubled her on to the very eve of her surrender. The deeper 
her love grew the more fiercely she wrestled with the evil 
fact. A low moral development and the purest resolve of 
an honest nature afforded her many pleas, and at length she 
believed she had finally put it down. She had argued that, 
from the opinions themselves of Faber, the thing could not 
consistently fail to be as no thing to him. Even were she 
mistaken in this conclusion, it would be to wrong his large 
nature, his generous love, his unselfish regard, his tender 
pitifulness, to fail of putting her silent trust in him. Besides, 
had she not read in the newspapers the utterance of a cer- 
tain worshipful judge on the bench that no man had any 
thing to do with his wife’s ante-nuptial history ? The con- 
tract then was certainly not retrospective. What in her re- 
mained unsatisfied after all her arguments, reasons, and 
appeals to common sense and consequences, she strove to 
strangle, and thought, hoped, she had succeeded. She 
willed her will, made up her mind, yielded to Paul’s solicita- 
tions, and put the whole painful thing away from her. 

The step taken, the marriage over, nothing could any 
more affect either fact. Only, unfortunately for the satis- 
faction and repose she had desired and expected, her love to 
her husband had gone on growing after they were married. 
True she sometimes fancied it otherwise, but while the petals 
of the rose were falling, its capsule was filling ; and not- 
withstanding the opposite tendency of the deoxygenated 
atmosphere in which their thoughts moved, she had begun 
already to long after an absolute union with him. But this 
growth of her love, and aspiration after its perfection, 
although at first they covered what was gone by with a 
deepening mist of apparent oblivion, were all the time 
bringing it closer to her consciousness — out of the far into 
the near. And now suddenly that shape she knew of, lying 
in the bottom of the darkest pool of the stagnant Past, had 
been stung into life by a wind of words that swept through 


PAUL FABER. 


235 


Nestley chapel, had stretched up a hideous neck and threat- 
ening head from the deep, and was staring at her with sod- 
den eyes : henceforth she knew that the hideous Fact had 
its appointed place between her and her beautiful Paul, the 
demon of the gulfy cleft that parted them. 

The moment she spoke in reply to his greeting her hus- 
band also felt something dividing them, but had no pre- 
sentiment of its being any thing of import. 

“ You are over-tired, my love,” he said, and taking her 
hand, felt her pulse. It was feeble and frequent. 

“ What have they been doing to you, my darling?” he 
asked. “ Those little demons of ponies running away 
again ? ” 

“ No,” she answered, scarce audibly. 

“ Something has gone wrong with you,” he persisted. 
“ Have you caught cold ? None of the old symptoms, I 
hope ? ” 

“ None, Paul. There is nothing the matter,” she an- 
swered, laying her head lightly, as if afraid of the liberty 
she took, upon his shoulder. His arm went round her 
waist. 

“ What is it, then, my wife ? ” he said tenderly. 

“ Which would you rather have, Paul — have me die, or 
do something wicked ? ” 

“Juliet, this will never do ! ” he returned quietly but 
almost severely. “ You have been again giving the reins 
to a morbid imagination. Weakness and folly only can come 
of that. It is nothing better than hysteria.” 

“ No, but tell me, dear Paul,” she persisted pleadingly. 
“ Answer my question. Do, please.” 

“ There is no such question to be answered,” he returned. 
“ You are not going to die, and I am yet more certain you 
are not going to do any thing wicked. Are you now ? ” 

“ No, Paul. Indeed I am not. But ” 

“ I have it ! ” he exclaimed. “ You went to church at 
Nestley last night ! Confound them all with their humbug ! 
You have been letting their infernal nonsense get a hold of 
you again ! It has quite upset you — that, and going much 
too long without your dinner. What ca7i be keeping it ? ” 
He left her hurriedly and rang the bell. “ You must speak 
to the cook, my love. She is getting out of the good 
habits I had so much trouble to teach her. But no — no ! 
you shall not be troubled with my servants. I will speak to 
her myself. After dinner I will read you some of my 


236 


PAUL FABER. 


favorite passages in Montaigne. No, you shall read to me : 
your French is so much better than mine.” 

Dinner was announced and nothing more was said. Paul 
ate well, Juliet scarcely at all, but she managed to hide 
from him the offense. They rose together and returned to 
the drawing-room. 

The moment Faber shut the door Juliet turned in the 
middle of the room, and as he came up to her said, in a 
voice much unlike her own : 

“ Paul, if I were to do any thing very bad, as bad as could 
be, would you forgive me ? ” 

“ Come, my love,” expostulated Faber, speaking more 
gently than before, for he had had his dinner, “ surely you 
are not going to spoil our evening with any more such non- 
sense ! ” 

“Answer me, Paul, or I shall think you do not love me,” 
she said, and the tone of her entreaty verged upon demand. 
“ Would you forgive me if I had done something very bad ? ” 

“ Of course I should,” he answered, with almost irritated 
haste, “ — that is, if I could ever bring myself to allow any 
thing you did was wrong. Only, you would witch me out 
of opinion and judgment and every thing else with two 
words from your dear lips.” 

“ Should I, Paul ? ” she said ; and lifting her face from 
his shoulder, she looked up in his from the depths of two 
dark fountains full of tears. Never does the soul so nearly 
identify itself with matter as when revealing itself through 
the eyes ; never does matter so nearly lose itself in spiritual 
absorption, as when two eyes like Juliet’s are possessed and 
glorified by the rush of the soul through their portals. 
Faber kissed eyes and lips and neck in a glow of delight. 
She was the vision of a most blessed dream, and she was 
his, all and altogether his ! He never thought then how his 
own uncreed and the prayer-book were of the same mind 
that Death would one day part them. There is that in every 
high and simple feeling that stamps it with eternity. For my 
own part I believe that, if life has not long before twinned 
any twain. Death can do nothing to divide them. The 
nature of each and every pure feeling, even in the man who 
may sin away the very memory of it, is immortal ; and who 
knows from under what a depth of ashes the love of the 
saving God may yet revive it ! 

The next moment the doctor was summoned. When he 
returned, Juliet was in bed, and pretended to be asleep. 


PAUL FABER. 


237 


In the morning she appeared at the breakfast table so 
pale, so worn, so troubled, that her husband was quite 
anxious about her. All she would confess to was, that she 
had not slept well, and had a headache. Attributing her 
condition to a nervous attack, he gave her some medicine, 
took her to the drawing-room, and prescribed the new piano, 
which he had already found the best of all sedatives for her. 
She loathed the very thought of it — could no more have 
touched it than if the ivory keys had been white hot steel. 
She watched him from the window while he mounted his 
horse, but the moment the last red gleam of Ruber vanished, 
she flung her arms above her head, and with a stifled cry 
threw herself on a couch, stuffed her handkerchief into her 
mouth, and in fierce dumb agony, tore it to shreds with 
hands and teeth. Presently she rose, opened the door 
almost furtively, and stole softly down the stair, looking this 
way and that, like one intent on some evil deed. At the 
bottom she pushed a green baize-covered door, peeped into 
a passage, then crept on tiptoe toward the surgery. Arrived 
there she darted to a spot she knew, and stretched a 
trembling hand toward a bottle full of a dark-colored liquid. 
As instantly she drew it back, and stood listening with 
bated breath and terrified look. It was a footstep ap- 
proaching the outer door of the surgery ! She turned and 
fled from it, still noiseless, and never stopped till she was in 
her own room. There she shut and locked the door, fell on 
her knees by the bedside, and pressed her face into the 
coverlid. She had no thought of praying. She wanted to 
hide, only to hide. Neither was it from old habit she fell 
upon her knees, for she had never been given to kneeling. 
I can not but think, nevertheless, that there was a dumb 
germ of prayer at the heart of the action — that falling upon 
her knees, and that hiding of her face. The same moment 
something took place within her to which she could have 
given no name, which she could have represented in no 
words, a something which came she knew not whence, was 
she knew not what, and went she knew not whither, of which 
indeed she would never have become aware except for what 
followed, but which yet so wrought, that she rose from her 
knees saying to herself, with clenched teeth and burning 
eyes, “ I will tell him.” 

As if she had known the moment of her death near, she 
began mechanically to set every thing in order in the room, 
and as she came to herself she was saying, “ Let him kill 


238 


PAUL FABER. 


me. I wish he would. I am quite willing to die by his 
hand. He will be kind, and do it gently. He knows so 
many ways ! ” 

It was a terrible day. She did not go out of her room 
again. Her mood changed a hundred times. The resolve 
to confess alternated with wild mockery and laughter, but 
still returned. She would struggle to persuade herself that 
her whole condition was one of foolish exaggeration, of 
senseless excitement about nothing — the merest delirium of 
feminine fastidiousness ; and the next instant would turn 
cold with horror at a fresh glimpse of the mere fact. What 
could the wretched matter be to him now — or to her ? Who 
was the worse, or had ever been the worse but herself ? And 
what did it amount to ? What claim had any one, what 
claim could even a God, if such a being there were, have 
upon the past which had gone from her, was no more in any 
possible sense within her reach than if it had never been ? 
Was it not as if it had never been ? Was the woman to be 
hurled — to hurl herself into misery for the fault of the girl ? 
It was all nonsense— a trifle at worst — a disagreeable trifle, 
no doubt, but still a trifle ! Only would to God she had 
died rather — even although then she would never have 
known Paul ! — Tut! she would never have thought of it 
again but for that horrid woman that lived over the draper’s 
shop ! All would have been well if she had but kept from 
thinking about it ! Nobody would have been a hair the 
worse then ! — But, poor Paul ! — to be married to such a 
woman as she ! 

If she were to be so foolish as let him know, how would 
it strike Paul ? What would he think of it ? Ought she not 
to be sure of that before she committed herself — before she 
uttered the irrevocable words ? Would he call it a trifle, or 
would he be ready to kill her ? True, he had no right, he 
could have no right to know ; but how horrible that there 
should be any thought of right between them 1 still worse, 
any thing whatever between them that he had no right to 
know ! worst of all, that she did not belong to him so utterly 
that he must have a right to know every thing about her ! 
She would tell him all ! She would ! she would ! she had 
no choice ! she must ! — But she need not tell him now. She 
was not strong enough to utter the necessary words. But 
that made the thing very dreadful ! If she could not speak 
the words, how bad it must really be ! — Impossible to tell 
her Paul ! That was pure absurdity. — Ah, but she could not 1 


PAUL FABER. 


239 


She would be certain to faint— or fall dead at his feet. That 
would be well !— Yes ! that would do ! She would take a 
wine-glass full of laudanum just before she told him ; then, 
if he was kind, she would confess the opium, and he could 
save her if he pleased ; if he was hard, she would say 
nothing, and die at his feet. She had hoped to die in his 
arms— all that was left of eternity. But her life was his, he 
had saved it with his own — oh horror ! that it should have 
been to disgrace him ! — and it should not last a moment 
longer than it was a pleasure to him. 

Worn out with thought and agony, she often fell asleep — 
only to start awake in fresh misery, and go over and over 
the same torturing round. Long before her husband ap- 
peared, she was in a burning fever. When he came, he put 
her at once to bed, and tended her with a solicitude as 
anxious as it was gentle. He soothed her to sleep, and 
then went and had some dinner. 

On his return, finding, as he had expected, that she still 
slept, he sat down by her bedside, and watched. Her slum- 
ber was broken with now and then a deep sigh, now and 
then a moan. Alas, that we should do the things that make 
for moan ! — but at least I understand why we are left to do 
them : it is because we can. A dull fire was burning in her 
soul, and over it stood the caldron of her history, and it 
bubbled in sighs and moans. 

Faber was ready enough to attribute every thing human to 
a physical origin, but as he sat there pondering her condi- 
tion, recalling her emotion and strange speech of the night 
before, and watching the state she was now in, an uneasi- 
ness began to gather — undefined, but other than concerned 
her health. Something must be wrong somewhere. He kept 
constantly assuring himself that at worst it could be but some 
mere moleheap, of which her lovelily sensitive organization, 
under the influence of a foolish preachment, made a mount- 
ain. Still, it was a huge disorder to come from a trifle ! 
At the same time who knew better than he upon what a 
merest trifle nervous excitement will fix the attention ! or how 
to the mental eye such a speck will grow and grow until it 
absorb the universe ! Only a certain other disquieting 
thought, having come once, would keep returning — that, 
thoroughly as he believed himself acquainted with her mind, 
he had very little knowledge of her history. He did not know 
a single friend of hers, had never met a person who knew any 
thing of her family, or had even an acquaintance with her 


240 


PAUL FABER. 


earlier than his own. The thing he most dreaded was, that the 
shadow of some old affection had returned upon her soul, 
and that, in her excessive delicacy, she heaped blame upon 
herself that she had not absolutely forgotten it. He flung 
from him in scorn every slightest suggestion of blame. His 
Juliet ! his glorious Juliet ! Bah j — But he must get her to 
say what the matter was — for her own sake ; he must help 
her to reveal her trouble, whatever it might be — else how 
was he to do his best to remove it ! She should find he knew 
how to be generous ! 

Thus thinking, he sat patient by her side, watching until 
the sun of her consciousness should rise and scatter the 
clouds of sleep. Hour after hour he sat, and still she slept, 
outwearied with the rack of emotion. Morning had begun 
to peer gray through the window-curtains, when she woke 
with a cry. 

She had been dreaming. In the little chapel in Nestley 
Park, she sat listening to the curate’s denouncement of 
hypocrisy, when suddenly the scene changed : the pulpit 
had grown to a mighty cloud, upon which stood an arch- 
angel with a trumpet in his hand. He cried that the hour 
of the great doom had come for all who bore within them 
the knowledge of any evil thing neither bemoaned before 
God nor confessed to man. Then he lifted the great silver 
trumpet with a gleam to his lips, and every fiber of her flesh 
quivered in expectation of the tearing blast that was to fol- 
low ; when instead, soft as a breath of spring from a bank 
of primroses, came the words, uttered in the gentlest of sor- 
rowful voices, and the voice seemed that of her unbelieving 
Paul: “ I will arise and go to my Father.” It was no won- 
der, therefore, that she woke with a cry. It was one of in- 
describable emotion. When she saw his face bending over 
her in anxious love, she threw her arms round his neck, burst 
into a storm of weeping, and sobbed. 

Oh Paul ! husband ! forgive me. I have sinned against 
you terribly — the worst sin a woman can commit. Oh Paul ! 
Paul ! make me clean, or I am lost.” 

“Juliet, you are raving,” he said, bewildered, a little 
angry, and at her condition not a little alarmed. For the 
confession, it was preposterous : they had not been many 
weeks married ! “ Calm yourself, or you will give me a 

lunatic for a wife ! ” he said. Then changing his tone, for 
his heart rebuked him, when he saw the ashy despair that 
spread over her face and eyes, “ Be still, my precious,” he 


PAUL FABER. 


241 


went on. “All is well. You have been dreaming, and are 
not yet quite awake. It is the morphia you had last night ! 
Don’t look so frightened. It is only your husband. No 
one else is near you.” 

With the tenderest smile he sought to reassure her, and 
would have gently released himself from the agonized clasp 
of her arms about his neck, that he might get her something. 
But she tightened her hold. 

“ Don’t leave me, Paul,” she cried. “ I was dreaming, 
but I am wide awake now, and know only too well what I 
have done.” 

“ Dreams are nothing. The will is not in them,” he said. 

But the thought of his sweet wife even dreaming a thing 
to be repented of in such dismay, tore his heart. For he was 
one of the many — not all of the purest — who cherish an ideal 
of woman which, although indeed poverty-stricken and crude, 
is to their minds of snowy favor, to their judgment of loftiest 
excellence. I trust in God that many a woman, despite the 
mud of doleful circumstance, yea, even the defilement that 
comes first from within, has risen to a radiance of essential 
innocence ineffably beyond that whose form stood white in 
Faber’s imagination. For I see and understand a little how 
God, giving righteousness, makes pure of sin, and that verily 
— by no theological quibble of imputation, by no play with 
words, by no shutting of the eyes, no oblivion, willful or irre- 
sistible, but by very fact of cleansing, so that the conscious- 
ness of the sinner becomes glistering as the raiment of the 
Lord on the mount of His transfiguration. I do not expect 
the Pharisee who calls the sinner evil names, and drags her 
up to judgment, to comprehend this ; but, woman, cry to 
thy Father in Heaven, for He can make thee white, even to 
the contentment of that womanhood which thou hast thyself 
outraged. 

Faber unconsciously prided himself on the severity of his 
requirements of woman, and .saw his own image reflected 
in the polish of his ideal ; and now a fear whose presence 
he would not acknowledge began to gnaw at his heart, a 
vague suggestion’s horrid image, to which he would yield 
no space, to flit about his brain. 

“ Would to God it were a dream, Paul ! ” answered the 
stricken wife. 

“ You foolish child ! ” returned the nigh trembling hus- 
band, “ how can you expect me to believe, married but 
yesterday, you have already got tired of me ! ” 


242 


PAUL FABER. 


“ Tired of you, Paul ! I should desire no other eternal 
paradise than to lie thus under your eyes forever.” 

‘‘ Then for my sake, my darling wife, send away this ex- 
travagance, this folly, this absurd fancy that has got such a 
hold of you. It will turn to something serious if you do not 
resist it. There can be no truth in it, and I am certain that 
one with any strength of character can do much at least to 
prevent the deeper rooting of a fixed idea.” But as he 
spoke thus to her, in his own soul he was as one fighting the 
demons off with a fan. “ Tell me what the mighty matter 
is,” he went on, “ that I may swear to you I love you the 
more for the worst weakness you have to confess.” 

“ Ah, my love ! ” returned Juliet, how like you are now 
to the Paul I have dreamed of so often ! But you will not 
be able to forgive me. I have read somewhere that men 
never forgive — that their honor is before their wives with 
them. Paul ! if you should not be able to forgive me, you 
must help me to die, and not be cruel to me.” 

“Juliet, I will not listen to any more such foolish words. 
Either tell me plainly what you mean, that I may convince 
you what a goose you are, or be quiet and go to sleep 
again.” 

“ Can it be that after all it does not signify so much ? ” she 
said aloud, but only to herself, meditating in the light of a 
little glow-worm of hope. “ Oh if it could be so ! And 
what is it really so much ? I have not murdered any body ! 
— I will tell you, Paul ! ” 

She drew his head closer down, laid her lips to his ear, 
gave a great gasp, and whispered two or three words. 

He started up, sundering at once the bonds of her clasped 
hands, cast one brief stare at her, turned, walked, with a 
great quick stride to his dressing-room, entered, and closed 
the door. 

As if with one rush of a fell wind, they were ages, deserts, 
empty star-spaces apart ! She was outside the universe, in 
the cold frenzy of infinite loneliness. The wolves of des- 
pair were howling in her. But' Paul was in the next room ! 
There was only the door between them ! She sprung from 
her bed and ran to a closet. The next moment she ap- 
peared in her husband’s dressing-room. 

Paul sat sunk together in his chair, his head hanging for- 
ward, his teeth set, his whole shape, in limb and feature, 
carrying the show of profound, of irrecoverable injury. He 
started to his feet when she entered. She did not once lift 


PAUL FABER. 


243 


her eyes to his face, but sunk on her knees before him, 
hurriedly slipped her night-gown from her shoulders to her 
waist, and over her head, bent toward the floor, held up to 
him a riding-whip. 

They were baleful stars that looked down on that naked 
world beneath them. 

To me scarce any thing is so utterly pathetic as the back. 
That of an animal even is full of sad suggestion. But the 
human back ! — It is the other, the dark side of the human 
moon ; the blind side of the being, defenseless, and exposed 
to every thing ; the ignorant side, turned toward the abyss 
of its unknown origin ; the unfeatured side, eyeless and 
dumb and helpless — the enduring animal of the marvelous 
commonwealth, to be given to the smiter, and to bend 
beneath the burden — lovely in its patience and the tender 
forms of its strength. 

An evil word, resented by the lowest of our sisters, 
rushed to the man’s lips, but died there in a strangled mur- 
mur, 

“ Paul ! ” said Juliet, in a voice from whose tone it seemed 
as if her soul had sunk away, and was crying out of a 
hollow place of the earth, “ take it — take it. Strike me.” 

He made no reply — stood utterly motionless, his teeth 
clenched so hard that he could not have spoken without 
grinding them. She waited as motionless, her face bowed 
to the floor, the whip held up over her head. 

** Paul ! ” she said again, “ you saved my life once : save 
my soul now. Whip me and take me again.” 

He answered with only a strange unnatural laugh through 
his teeth. 

Whip me and let me die then,” she said. 

He spoke no word. She spoke again. Despair gave her 
both insight and utterance — despair and great love, and the 
truth of God that underlies even despair. 

You pressed me to marry you,” she said : “ what was I 
to do ? How could I tell you ? And I loved you so ! I 
persuaded myself I was safe with you — you were so gener- 
ous. You would protect me from every thing, even my 
own past. In your name I sent it away, and would not 
think of it again. I said to myself you would not wish me 
to tell you the evil that had befallen me. I persuaded my- 
self you loved me enough even for that. I held my peace 
trusting you. Oh my husband ! my Paul ! my heart is 
crushed. The dreadful thing has come back. I thought it 


244 


PAUL FABER. 


was gone from me, and now it will not leave me any more. 
I am a horror to myself. There is no one to punish and 
forgive me but you. Forgive me, my husband. You are the 
God to whom I pray. If you pardon me I shall be content 
even with myself. I shall seek no other pardon ; your 
favor is all I care for. If you take me for clean, I am 
clean for all the world. You can make me clean — you only. 
Do it, Paul ; do it, husband. Make me clean that I may 
look women in the face. Do, Paul, take the whip and strike 
me. I long for my deserts at your hand. Do comfort me. 
I am waiting the sting of it, Paul, to know that you have 
forgiven me. If I should cry out, it will be for gladness. — 
Oh, my husband,” — here her voice rose to an agony of 
entreaty — “ I was but a girl — hardly more than a child in 
knowledge — I did not know what I was doing. Pie was 
much older than I was, and I trusted him ! — O my God ! I 
hardly know what I knew and what I did not know : it was 
only when it was too late that I woke and understood. I hate 
myself. I scorn myself. But am I to be wretched forever 
because of that one fault, Paul ? Will you not be my saviour 
and forgive me my sin ? Oh, do not drive me mad. I am 
only clinging to my reason. Whip me and I shall be well. 
Take me again, Paul. I will not, if you like, even fancy 
myself your wife any more. I will be your slave. You 
shall do with me whatever you will. I will obey you to the 
very letter. Oh beat me and let me go.” 

She sunk prone on the floor, and clasped and kissed his 
feet. 

He took the whip from her hand. 

Of course a man can not strike a woman ! He may tread 
her in the mire ; he may clasp her and then scorn her ; he 
may kiss her close, and then dash her from him into a dung- 
heap, but he must not strike her — that would be unmanly ! 
Oh ! grace itself is the rage of the pitiful Othello to the 
forbearance of many a self-contained, cold-blooded, self- 
careful slave, that thinks himself a gentleman ! Had not 
Faber been even then full of his own precious self, had he 
yielded to her prayer or to his own wrath, how many hours 
of agony would have been saved them both ! — “ What ! 
would you have had him really strike her ? ” I would have 
had him do any thing rather than choose himself and reject 
his wife : make of it what you will. Had he struck once, 
had he seen the purple streak rise in the snow, that instant 
his pride- frozen heart would have melted into a torrent of 


PAUL FABER. 


245 


grief ; he would have flung himself on the floor beside her, 
and in an agony of pity over her and horror at his own sacri- 
lege, would have clasped her to his bosom, and baptized her 
in the tears of remorse and repentance ; from that moment 
they would have been married indeed. 

When she felt him take the whip, the poor lady’s heart 
gave a great heave of hope ; then her flesh quivered with 
fear. She closed her teeth hard, to welcome the blow 
without a cry. Would he give her many stripes ? Then the 
last should be welcome as the first. Would it spoil her 
skin ? What matter if it was his own hand that did it ! 

A brief delay — long to her ! then the hiss, as it seemed, 
of the coming blow ! But instead of the pang she awaited, 
the sharp ring of breaking glass followed : he had thrown 
the whip through the window into the garden. The same 
moment he dragged his feet rudely from her embrace, and 
left the room. The devil and the gentleman had conquered. 
He had spared her, not in love, but in scorn. She gave 
one great cry of utter loss, and lay senseless. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE BOTTOMLESS POOL. 

She came to herself in the gray dawn. She was cold as ice 
— cold to the very heart, but she did not feel the cold: there 
was nothing in her to compare it against ; her very being 
was frozen. The man who had given her life had thrown 
her from him. Pie cared less for her than for the tortured 
dog. She was an outcast, defiled and miserable. Alas ! 
alas ! this was what came of speaking the truth — of making 
confession ! The cruel scripture had wrought its own ful- 
fillment, made a mock of her, and ruined her husband’s 
peace. She knew poor Paul would never be himself again! 
She had carried the snake so long harmless in her bosom 
only to let it at last creep from her lips into .her husband’s 
ear, sting the vital core of her universe, and blast it for- 
ever I How foolish she had been ! — W*hat was left her to 
do ? What would her husband have her to do ? Oh misery ! 
he cared no more what she did or did not do. She was 
alone — utterly alone ! But she need not live. 


246 


PAUL FABER. 


Dimly, vaguely, the vapor of such thoughts as these 
passed through her despairing soul, as she lifted herself 
from the floor and tottered back to her room. Yet even 
then, in the very midst of her freezing misery, there was, 
although she had not yet begun to recognize it, a nascent 
comfort in that she had spoken and confessed. She would 
not really have taken back her confession. And although 
the torture was greater, yet was it more endurable than that 
she had been suffering before. She had told him who had 
a right to know. — But, alas ! what a deception was that 
dream of the trumpet and the voice ! A poor trick to 
entrap a helpless sinner ! 

Slowly, with benumbed fingers and trembling hands, she 
dressed herself : that bed she would lie in no more, for she 
had wronged her husband. Whether before or after he was 
her husband, mattered nothing. To have ever called him 
husband was the wrong. She had seemed that she was not, 
else he would never have loved or sought her ; she had out- 
raged his dignity, defiled him ; he had cast her off, and she 
could not, would not blame him. Happily for her endur- 
ance of her misery, she did not turn upon her idol and cast 
him from his pedestal ; she did not fix her gaze upon his 
failure instead of her own ; she did not espy the contempti- 
ble in his conduct, and revolt from her allegiance. 

But was such a man then altogether the ideal of a wom- 
an’s soul ? Was he a fit champion of humanity who would 
aid only within the limits of his pride ? who, when a despair- 
ing creature cried in soul-agony for help, thought first and 
only of his own honor ? The notion men call their honor 
is the shadow of righteousness, the shape that is where the 
light is not, the devil that dresses as nearly in angel-fashion 
as he can, but is none the less for that a sneak and a 
coward. 

She put on her cloak and bonnet : the house was his, not 
hers. He and she had never been one : she must go and 
meet her fate. There was one power, at least, the key to 
the great door of liberty, which the weakest as well as the 
strongest possessed : she could die. Ah, how welcome 
would Death be now ! Did he ever know or heed the right 
time to come, without being sent for — without being com- 
pelled ? In the meantime her only anxiety was to get out 
of the house : away from Paul she would understand more 
precisely what she had to do. With the feeling of his angry 
presence, she could not think. Yet how she loved him — 


PAUL FABER. 


247 


Strong in his virtue and indignation ! She had not yet 
begun to pity herself, or to allow to her heart that he was 
hard upon her. 

She was leaving the room when a glitter on her hand 
caught her eye : the old diamond disk, which he had bought 
of her in her trouble, and restored to her on her wedding- 
day, was answering the herald of the sunrise. She drew it 
off : he must have it again. With it she drew off also her 
wedding-ring. Together she laid them on the dressing 
table, turned again, and with noiseless foot and desert heart 
went through the house, opened the door, and stole into 
the street. A thin mist was waiting for her. A lean cat, 
gray as the mist, stood on the steps of the door opposite. 
No other living thing was to be seen. The air was chill. 
The autumn rains were at hand. But her heart was the only 
desolation. 

Already she knew where she was going. In the street 
she turned to the left. 

Shortly before, she had gone with Dorothy, for the first 
time, to see the Old House, and there had had rather a nar- 
row escape. Walking down the garden they came to the 
pond or small lake, so well known to the children of Glas- 
ton as bottomless. Two stone steps led from the end of 
the principal walk down to the water, which was, at the 
time, nearly level with the top of the second. On the upper 
step Juliet was standing, not without fear, gazing into the 
gulf, which was yet far deeper than she imagined, when, 
without the smallest preindication, the lower step suddenly 
sank. Juliet sprung back to the walk, but turned instantly 
to look again. She saw the stone sinking, and her eyes 
opened wider and wider, as it swelled and thinned to a 
great, dull, wavering mass, grew dimmer and dimmer, then 
melted away and vanished utterly. With “ stricken look,” 
and fright-filled eyes, she turned to Dorothy, who was a 
little behind her, and said, 

“ How will you be able to sleep at night ? I should be 
always fancying myself sliding down into it through the 
darkness.” 

To this place of terror she was now on the road. When 
consciousness returned to her as she lay on the floor of her 
husband’s dressing-room, it brought with it first the awful 
pool and the sinking stone. She seemed to stand watching 
it sink, lazily settling with a swing this way and a sway 
that, into the bosom of the earth, down and down, and still 


248 


PAUL FABER. 


down. Nor did the vision leave her as she came more to 
herself. Even when her mental eyes were at length quite 
open to the far more frightful verities of her condition, half 
of her consciousness was still watching the ever sinking 
stone ; until at last she seemed to understand that it was 
showing her a door out of her misery, one easy to open. 

She went the same way into the park that Dorothy had 
then taken her — through a little door of privilege which she 
had shown her how to open, and not by the lodge. The 
light was growing fast, but the sun was not yet up. With 
feeble steps but feverous haste she hurried over the grass. 
Her feet were wet through her thin shoes. Her dress was 
fringed with dew. But there was no need for taking care 
of herself now ; she felt herself already beyond the reach of 
sickness. The still pond would soon wash off the dew. 

Suddenly, with a tremor of waking hope, came the thought 
that, when she was gone from his sight, the heart of her 
husband would perhaps turn again toward her a little. For 
would he not then be avenged ? would not his justice be 
satisfied ? She had been well drilled in the theological lie, 
that punishment is the satisfaction of justice. 

“ Oh, now I thank you, Paul ! ” she said, as she hastened 
along. “ You taught me the darkness, and made me brave 
to seek its refuge. Think of me sometimes, Paul. I will 
come back to you if I can — but no, there is no coming 
back, no greeting more, no shadows even to mingle their 
loves, for in a dream there is but one that dreams. I shall 
be the one that does not dream. There is nothing where I 
am going — not even the darkness — nothing but nothing. 
Ah, would I were in it now ! I^et me make haste. All 
will be one, for all will be none when I am there. Make you 
haste too, and come into the darkness, Paul. It is sooth- 
ing and soft and cool. It will wash away the sin of the 
girl and leave you a nothing.” 

While she was hurrying toward the awful pool, her hus- 
band sat in his study, sunk in a cold fury of conscious dis- 
grace — not because of his cruelty, not because he had cast a 
woman into hell — but because his honor, his self-satisfac- 
tion in his own fate, was thrown to the worms. Did he fail 
thus in consequence of having rejected the common belief ? 
No ; something far above the common belief it must be, 
that would have enabled him to act otherwise. But had he 
known the Man of the gospel, he could not have left her. 
He would have taken her to his sorrowful bosom, wept with 


PAUL FABER. 


249 


her, forgotten himself in pitiful grief over the spot upon 
her whiteness ; he would have washed her clean with love 
and husband-power. He would have welcomed his shame 
as his hold of her burden, whereby to lift it, with all its 
misery and loss, from her heart forever. Had Faber done 
so as he was, he would have come close up to the gate of 
the kingdom of Heaven, for he would have been like- 
minded with Him who sought not His own. His honor, for- 
sooth ! Pride is a mighty honor ! His pride was great 
indeed, but it was not grand ! Nothing reflected, nothing 
whose object is self, has in it the poorest element of grandeur. 
Our selves are ours that we may lay them on the altar 
of love. Lying there, bound and bleeding and burn- 
ing if need be, they are grand indeed — for they are in their 
noble place, and rejoicing in their fate. But this man was 
miserable, because, the possessor of a priceless jewel, he had 
found it was not such as would pass for flawless in the 
judgment of men — judges themselves unjust, whose very 
hearts were full of bribes. He sat there an injured hus- 
band, a wronged, woman-cheated, mocked man — he in 
whose eyes even a smutch on her face would have lowered 
a woman — who would not have listened to an angel with a 
broken wing-feather ! 

Let me not be supposed to make a little of Juliet’s loss ! 
What that amounted to, let Juliet feel ! — let any woman say, 
who loves a man, and would be what that man thinks her ! 
But I read, and think I understand, the words of the per- 
fect Purity : “ Neither do I condemn thee : go and sin no 

more.” 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

A HEART. 

If people were both observant and memorious, they 
would cease, I fancy, to be astonished at coincidences. 
Rightly regarded, the universe is but one coincidence — 
only where will has to be developed, there is need for human 
play, and room for that must be provided in its spaces. 
The works of God being from the beginning, and all his 
beginnings invisible either from greatness or smallness or 
nearness or remoteness, numberless coincidences may pass 


250 


PAUL FABER. 


in every man’s history, before he becomes capable of know- 
ing either the need or the good of them, or even of noting 
them. 

The same morning there was another awake and up early. 
When Juliet was about half-way across the park, hurrying 
to the water, Dorothy was opening the door of the empty 
house, seeking solitude that she might find the one Dweller 
therein. She went straight to one of the upper rooms look- 
ing out upon the garden, and kneeling prayed to her 
Unknown God. As she kneeled, the first rays of the sunrise 
visited her face. That face was in itself such an embodied 
prayer, that had any one seen it, he might, when the beams 
fell upon it, have imagined he saw prayer and answer meet. 
It was another sunrise Dorothy was looking for, but she 
started and smiled when the warm rays touched her ; they 
too came from the home of answers. As the daisy mimics the 
sun, so is the central fire of our system but a flower that 
blossoms in the eternal effulgence of the unapproachable 
light. 

The God to wh»m we pray is nearer to us than the 
very prayer itself ere it leaves the heart ; hence His answers 
may well come to us through the channel of our own 
thoughts. But the world too being itself one of His 
thoughts. He may also well make the least likely of His 
creatures an angel of His own will to us. Even the blind, 
if God be with him, that is, if he knows he is blind and 
does not think he sees, may become a leader of the blind up 
to the narrow gate. It is the blind who says / see^ that 
leads his fellow into the ditch. 

The window near which Dorothy kneeled, and toward 
which in the instinct for light she had turned her face, 
looked straight down the garden, at the foot of which the 
greater part of the circumference of the pond was visible. 
But Dorothy, busy with her prayers, or rather with a weight 
of hunger and thirst, from which like a burst of lightning 
skyward from the overcharged earth, a prayer would now 
and then break and rush heavenward, saw nothing of the 
outer world : between her and a sister soul in mortal agony, 
hung the curtains of her eyelids. \ But there were no shutters 
to her ears, and in at their portals all of a sudden darted a 
great and bitter cry, as from a heart in the gripe of a fierce 
terror. She had been so absorbed, and it so startled and 
shook her, that she never could feel certain whether the cry 
she heard was of this world or not. Half-asleep one hears 


PAUL FABER. 


251 


such a cry, and can not tell whether it entered his con- 
sciousness by the ear, or through some hidden channel of 
the soul. Assured that waking ears heard nothing, he 
remains, it may be, in equal doubt, whether it came from 
the other side of life or was the mere cry of a dream. 
Before Dorothy was aware of a movement of her will, she 
was on her feet, and staring from the window. Something 
was lying on the grass beyond the garden wall, close to the 
pond : it looked like a woman. She darted from the house, 
out of the garden, and down the other side of the wall. 
When she came nearer she saw it was indeed a woman, 
evidently insensible. She was bare-headed. Her bonnet was 
floating in the pond; the wind had blown it almost to the mid- 
dle of it. Her face was turned toward the water. One hand 
was in it. The bank overhung the pond, and with a single 
movement more she would probably have been beyond help 
from Dorothy. She caught her by the arm, and dragged 
her from the brink, before ever she looked in her face. 
Then to her amazement she saw it was Juliet. She opened 
her eyes, and it was as if a lost soul looked out of them 
upon Dorothy — a being to whom the world was nothing, so 
occupied was it with some torment, which alone measured 
its existence — far away, although it hung attached to the 
world by a single hook of brain and nerve. 

“ Juliet, my darling ! ” said Dorothy, her voice trembling 
with the love which only souls that know trouble can feel for 
the troubled, “ come with me. I will take care of you.” 

At the sound of her voice, Juliet shuddered. Then a better 
light came into her eyes, and feebly she endeavored to get 
up. With Dorothy’s help she succeeded, but stood as if 
ready to sink again to the earth. She drew her cloak about 
her, turned and stared at the water, turned again and stared 
at Dorothy, at last threw herself into her arms, and sobbed 
and wailed. For a few moments Dorothy held her in a close 
embrace. Then she sought to lead her to the house, and 
Juliet yielded at once. She took her into one of the lower 
rooms, and got her some water — it was all she could get for 
her, and made her sit down on the window-seat. It seemed 
a measureless time before she made the least attempt to 
speak ; and again and again when she began to try, she 
failed. She opened her mouth, but no sounds would come. 
At length, interrupted with choking gasps, low cries of des- 
pair, and long intervals of sobbing, she said something like 
this : 


252 


PAUL FABER. 


“ I was going to drown myself. When I came in sight of 
the water, I fell down in a half kind of faint. All the time 
I lay, I felt as if some one was dragging me nearer and 
nearer to the pool. Then something came and drew me 
back — and it was you, Dorothy. But you ought to have left 
me. I am a wretch. There is no room for me in this world 
any more. ” She stopped a moment, then fixing wide eyes 
on Dorothy’s, said, “ Oh Dorothy, dear ! there are awful 
things in the world ! as awful as any you ever read in a 
book ! ” 

** 1 know that, dear. But oh ! lam sorry if any of them 
have come your way. Tell me what is the matter. I wi7/ 
help you if I can.” 

I dare not ; I dare not ! I should go raving mad if I 
said a word about it.” 

“ Then don’t tell me, my dear. Come with me up stairs ; 
there is a warmer room there — full of sunshine ; you are 
nearly dead with cold. I came here this morning, Juliet, 
to be alone and pray to God ; and see what He has sent me ! 
You, dear ! Come up stairs. Why, you are quite wet ! You 
will get your death of cold ! ” 

“ Then it would be all right. I would rather not kill 
myself if I could die without. But it must be somehow.” 

“ We’ll talk about it afterward. Come now.” 

With Dorothy’s arm round her waist, Juliet climbed 
trembling to the warmer room. On a rickety wooden chair, 
Dorothy made her sit in the sunshine, while she went and 
gathered chips and shavings and bits of wood left by the 
workmen. With these she soon kindled a fire in the rusty 
grate. Then she took off Juliet’s shoes and stockings, and 
put her own upon her. She made no resistance, only her eyes 
followed Dorothy’s bare feet going to and fro, as if she felt 
something was wrong, and had not strength to inquire into it. 

But Dorothy’s heart rebuked her for its own lightness. 
It had not been so light for many a day. It seemed as if 
God was letting her know that He was there. She spread 
her cloak on a sunny spot of the floor, made Juliet lie down 
upon it, put a bundle of shavings under her head, covered 
her with her own cloak, which she had dried at the fire, and 
was leaving the room 

Where are you going, Dorothy ? ” cried Juliet, seeming 
all at once to wake up. 

“ I am going to fetch your husband, dear,” answered 
Dorothy. 


PAUL FABER. 253 

She gave a great cry, rose to her knees, and clasped 
Dorothy round hers. 

“ No, no, no ! ” she screamed. “ You shall not. If you 
do, I swear I will run straight to the pond.” 

Notwithstanding the wildness of her voice and look, there 
was an evident determination in both. 

“ I will do nothing you don’t like, dear,” said Dorothy. 
“ I thought that was the best thing I could do for you.” 

“ No ! no ! no ! any thing but that ! ” 

“ Then of course I won’t. But I must go and get you 
something to eat.” 

“ I could not swallow a mouthful ; it would choke me. 
And where would be the good of it, when life is over ! ” 

“ Don’t talk like that, dear. Life can’t be over till it is 
taken from us.” 

“ Ah, you would see it just as I do, if you knew all ! ” 

“ Tell me all, then.” 

Where is the use, when there is no help ? ” 

“No help ! ” echoed Dorothy. — The words she had so 
often uttered in her own heart, coming from the lips of 
another, carried in them an incredible contradiction. — Could 
God make or the world breed the irreparable? — “Juliet,” 
she went on, after a little pause, “ I have often said the same 
myself, but ” 

“You ! ” interrupted Juliet ; “ you who always professed 
to believe ! ” 

Dorothy’s ear could not distinguish whether the tone was 
of indignation or of bitterness. 

“ You never heard me, Juliet,” she answered, “ profess 
any thing. If my surroundings did so for me, I could not 
help that. I never dared say I believed any thing. But I 
hope — and, perhaps,” she went on with a smile, “ seeing 
Hope is own sister to Faith, she may bring me to know her 
too some day. Paul says ” 

Dorothy had been brought up a dissenter, and never said 
Sf. this one or that, any more than the Christians of the New 
Testament. 

At the sound of the name, Juliet burst into tears, the first 
she shed, for the word Paul^ like the head of the javelin torn 
from the wound, brought the whole fountain after it. She 
cast herself down again, and lay and wept. Dorothy kneeled 
beside her, and laid a hand on her shoulder. It was the 
only way she could reach her at all. 

“ You see,” she said at last, for the weeping went on and 


254 


PAUL FABER. 


on, there is nothing will do you any good but your 
husband.” 

‘‘ No, no ; he has cast me from him forever ! ” she cried, 
in a strange wail that rose to a shriek. 

The wretch ! ” exclaimed Dorothy, clenching a fist 
whose little bones looked fierce through the whitened skin. 

“ No,” returned Juliet, suddenly calmed, in a voice almost 
severe ; “ it is I who am the wretch, to give you a moment 
in which to blame him. He has done nothing but what is 
right.” 

“ I don’t believe it.” 

“ I deserved it.” 

“ I am sure you did not. I would believe a thousand 
things against him before I would believe one against you, 
my poor white queen ! ” cried Dorothy, kissing her hand. 

She snatched it away, and covered her face with both 
hands. 

“ I should only need to tell you one thing to convince 
you,” she sobbed from behind them. 

“ Then tell it me, that I may not be unjust to him.” 

‘‘ I can not.” 

“ I won’t take your word against yourself,” returned 
Dorothy determinedly. “ You will have to tell me, or leave 
me to think the worst of him.” She was moved by no vul- 
gar curiosity : how is one to help without knowing ? “ Tell 
me, my dear,” she went on after a little ; “ tell me all about 
it, and in the name of the God in whom I hope to believe, 
I promise to give myself to your service.” 

Thus adjured, Juliet found herself compelled. But with 
what heart-tearing groans and sobs, with what intervals of 
dumbness, in which the truth seemed unutterable for des- 
pair and shame, followed by what hurrying of v;ild con- 
fession, as if she would cast it from her, the sad tale found 
its way into Dorothy’s aching heart, I will not attempt to des- 
cribe. It is enough that at last it was told, and that it had 
entered at the wide-open, eternal doors of sympathy. If Juliet 
had lost a husband, she had gained a friend, and that was 
something — indeed no little thing — for in her kind the friend 
was more complete than the husband. She was truer, more 
entire — in friendship nearly perfect. When a final burst of 
tears had ended the story of loss and despair, a silence fell. 

“ Oh, those men ! those men ! ” said Dorothy, in a low 
voice of bitterness, as if she knew them and their ways 
well, though never had kiss of man save her father lighted 


PAUL FABER. 


255 


on her cheek. “ — My poor darling ! she said after 
another pause, “ — and he cast you from him ! — I suppose a 
woman’s heart,” she went on after a third pause, “ can 
never make up for the loss of a man’s, but here is mine for 
you to go into the very middle of, and lie down there.” 

Juliet had, as she told her story, risen to her knees. 
Dorothy was on hers too, and as she spoke she opened wide 
her arms, and clasped the despised wife to her bosom. 
None but the arms of her husband, Juliet believed, could 
make her alive with forgiveness, yet she felt a strange com- 
fort in that embrace. It wrought upon her as if she had 
heard a far-off whisper of the words : Thy sins be forgiven 
thee. And no wonder : there was the bosom of one of the 
Lord’s clean ones for her to rest upon ! It was her first 
lesson in the mighty truth that sin of all things is mortal, 
and purity alone can live for evermore. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

TWO MORE MINDS. 

Nothing makes a man strong like a call upon him for 
help — a fact which points at a unity more delicate and close 
and profound than heart has yet perceived. It is but “ a 
modern instance” how a mother, if she be but a hen, 
becomes bold as a tigress for her periled offspring. A 
stranger will fight for the stranger who puts his trust in 
him. The most foolish of men will search his musty brain 
to find wise saws for his boy. An anxious man, going to 
his friend to borrow, may return having lent him instead. 
The man who has found nothing yet in the world save food 
for the hard, sharp, clear intellect, will yet cast an eye 
around the universe to see if perchance there may not be 
a God somewhere for the hungering heart of his friend. 
The poor, but lovely, the doubting, yet living faith of 
Dorothy arose, stretched out its crippled wings, and began 
to arrange and straighten their disordered feathers. It is a 
fair sight, any creature, be it but a fly, dressing its wings ! 
Dorothy’s were feeble, ruffled, their pen-feathers bent and 
a little crushed ; but Juliet’s were full of mud, paralyzed 


256 


PAUL FABER. 


with disuse, and grievously singed in the smoldering fire 
of her secret. A butterfly that has burned its wings is not 
very unlike a caterpillar again. 

“ Look here, Juliet,” said Dorothy : “ there must be some 
way out of it, or there is no saving God in the universe. — 
Now don’t begin to say there isn’t, because, you see, it is 
your only chance. It would be a pity to make a fool of 
yourself by being over-wise, to lose every thing by taking it 
for granted there is no God. If after all there should be 
one, it would be the saddest thing to perish for want of 
Him. I won’t say I am as miserable as you, for I haven’t 
a husband to trample on my heart ; but I am miserable 
enough, and want dreadfully to be saved. I don’t call this 
life worth living. Nothing is right, nothing goes well — 
there is no harmony in me. I don’t call it life at all. I 
want music and light in me. I want a God to save me out 
of this wretchedness. I want health.” 

“I thought you were never ill, Dorothy,” murmured 
Juliet listlessly. 

“ Is it possible you do not know what I mean ? ” returned 
Dorothy. “ Do you never feel wretched and sick in your 
very soul ? — disgusted with yourself, and longing to be 
lifted up out of yourself into a region of higher conditions 
altogether ? ” 

That kind of thing Juliet had been learning to attribute 
to the state of her health — had partly learned : it is hard to 
learn any thing false thoroughly^ for it can not so be learned. 
It is true that it is often, perhaps it is generally, in troubled 
health, that such thoughts come first ; but in nature there 
are facts of color that the cloudy day reveals. So sure am I 
that many things v/hich illness has led me to see are true, 
that I would endlessly rather never be well than lose sight 
of them. “ So would any madman say of his fixed idea.” I 
will keep my madness, then, for therein most do I desire 
the noble : and to desire what I desire, if it be but to desire, 
is better than to have all you offer us in the name of truth. 
Through such desire and the hope of its attainment, all 
greatest things have been wrought in the earth : I too have 
my unbelief as well as you — I can not believe that a lie on 
the belief of which has depended our highest development. 
You may say you have a higher to bring in. But that 
higher you have become capable of by the precedent lie. 
Yet you vaunt truth ! You would sink us low indeed, mak- 
ing out falsehood our best nourishment — at some period of 


PAUL FABER. 


257 


our history at least. If, however, what I call true and high, 
you call false and low — my assertion that you have never 
seen that of which I so speak will not help — then is there 
nothing left us but to part, each go his own road, and wait 
the end — which according to my expectation will show the 
truth, according to yours, being nothing, will show nothing. 

“ I can not help thinking, if we could only get up there,” 
Dorothy went on, — “ I mean into a life of which I can at 
least dream — if I could but get my head and heart into the 
kingdom of Heaven, I should find that every thing else would 
come right. I believe it is God Himself I want — nothing 
will do but Himself in me. Mr. Wingfold says that we find 
things all wrong about us, that they keep going against our 
will and our liking, just to drive things right inside us, or 
at least to drive us where we can get them put right ; and 
that, as soon as their work is done, the waves will lie down 
at our feet, or if not, we shall at least walk over their crests.” 

“ It sounds very nice, and would comfort any body that 
wasn’t in trouble,” said Juliet ; “ but you wouldn’t care one 
bit for it all any more than I do, if you had pain and love 
like mine pulling at your heart.” 

“ I have seen a mother make sad faces enough over the 
baby at her breast,” said Dorothy. “ Love and pain seem 
so strangely one in this world, the wonder is how they will 
ever get parted. What God must feel like, with this world 
hanging on to Him with all its pains and cries ! ” 

“ It’s His own fault,” said Juliet bitterly. “ Why did He 
make us — or why did He not make us good ? I’m sure I 
don’t know where was the use of making me ! ” 

“ Perhaps not much yet,” replied Dorothy, “ but then He 
hasn’t made you. He hasn’t done with you yet. He is mak- 
ing you now, and you don’t like it.” 

“ No, I don’t — if you call this making. Why does He do 
it ? He could have avoided all this trouble by leaving us 
alone.” 

“ I put something like the same question once to Mr. 
Wingfold,” said Dorothy, “ and he told me it was impossible 
to show any one the truths of the kingdom of Heaven ; he 
must learn them for himself. ‘ I can do little more,’ he 
said, ‘ than give you my testimony that it seems to me all 
right. If God has not made you good. He has made you 
with the feeling that you ought to be good, and at least a 
half-conviction that to Him you have to go for help to be- 
come good. When you are good, then you will know why 


PAUL FABER. 


258 

He did not make you good at first, and will be perfectly 
satisfied with the reason, because you will find it good and 
just and right — so good that it was altogether beyond the 
understanding of one who was not good. I don’t think,’ he 
said, ‘ you will ever get a thoroughly satisfactory answer to 
any question till you go to Himself for it — and then it may 
take years to make you fit to receive, that is to understand 
the answer.’ Oh Juliet ! sometimes I have felt in my heart 
as if — I am afraid to say it, even to you, ” 

“ / shan’t be shocked at any thing ; I am long past that,” 
sighed Juliet. 

“ It is not of you I am afraid,” said Dorothy. It is a 
kind of awe of the universe I feel. But God is the uni- 
verse ; His is the only ear that will hear me ; and He knows 
my thoughts already. Juliet, I feel sometimes as if I must 
"be good for God’s sake ; as if I was sorry for Him, because 
He has such a troublesome nursery of children, that will not 
or can not understand Him, and will not do what He tells 
them, and He all the time doing the very best for them He 
can.” 

“ It may be all very true, or all great nonsense, Dorothy, 
dear ; I don’t care a bit about it. All I care for is — I don’t 
know what I care for — I don’t care for any thing any more 
— there is nothing left to care for. I love my husband with 
a heart like to break — oh, how I wish it would ! He hates 
and despises me and I dare not wish that he wouldn’t. If 
he were to forgive me quite, I should yet feel that he ought 
to despise me, and that would be all the same as if he did, 
and there is no help. Oh, how horrid I look to him ! I 
can't bear it. I fancied it was all gone ; but there it is, and 
there it must be forever. I don’t care about a God. If 
there were a God, what would He be to me without my 
Paul ? ” 

I think, Juliet, you will yet come to say, ‘ What would 
my Paul be to me without my God ? ’ I suspect we have no 
more idea than that lonely fly on the window there, what it 
would be to have a God," 

I don’t care. I would rather go to hell with my Paul 
than go to Heaven without him,” moaned Juliet. 

“ But what if God should be the only where to find your 
Paul ?” said Dorothy. “What if the gulf that parts you is 
just the gulf of a God not believed in — a universe which 
neither of you can cross to meet the other — just because you 
do not believe it is there at all ? ” 


PAUL FABER. 


259 


Juliet made no answer — Dorothy could not tell whether 
from feeling or from indifference. The fact was, the words 
conveyed no more meaning to Juliet than they will to some 
of my readers. Why do I write them then ? Because there 
are some who will understand them at once, and others who 
will grow to understand them. Dorothy was astonished to find 
herself saying them. The demands of her new office of com- 
forter gave shape to many half-formed thoughts, substance 
to many shadowy perceptions, something like music to not a 
few dim feelings moving within her ; but what she said 
hardly seemed her own at all. 

Had it not been for Wingfold’s help, Dorothy might not 
have learned these things in this world ; but had it not been 
for Juliet, they would have taken years more to blossom in 
her being, and so become her own. Her faint hope seemed 
now to break forth suddenly into power. Whether or not 
she was saying such things as were within the scope of 
Juliet’s apprehension, was a matter of comparatively little 
moment. As she lay there in misery, rocking herself from 
side to side on the floor, she would have taken hold of noth- 
ing. But love is the first comforter, and where love and 
truth speak, the love will be felt where the truth is never 
perceived. Love indeed is the highest in all truth ; and the 
pressure of a hand, a kiss, the caress of a child, will do more 
to save sometimes than the wisest argument, even rightly 
understood. Love alone is wisdom, love alone is power ; 
and where love seems to fail it is where self has stepped be- 
tween and dulled the potency of its rays. 

Dorothy thought of another line of expostulation. 

“ Juliet,” she said, ‘‘ suppose you were to drown yourself 
and your husband were to repent ? ” 

“ That is the only hope left me. You see yourself I have 
no choice.” 

“ You have no pity, it seems ; for what then would be- 
come of him ? What if he should come to himself in bitter 
sorrow, in wild longing for your forgiveness, but you had 
taken your forgiveness with you, where he had no hope of 
ever finding it ? Do you want to punish him ? to make him as 
miserable as yourself ? to add immeasurably to the wrong 
you have done him, by going where no word, no message, 
no letter can pass, no cry can cross ? No, Juliet — death can 
set nothing right. But if there be a God, then nothing can 
go wrong but He can set it right, and set it right better than 
it was before.” 


26 o 


PAUL FABER. 


He could not make it better than it was.” 

“ What ! — is that your ideal of love — a love that fails in 
the first trial ? If He could not better that, then indeed He 
were no God worth the name.” 

“ Why then did He make us such — make such a world as 
is always going wrong ? ” 

“ Mr. Wingfold says it is always going righter the same 
time it is going wrong. I grant He would have had no right to 
make a world that might go further wrong than He could 
set right at His own cost. But if at His own cost He turn 
its ills into goods ? its ugliness into favor ? Ah, if it should 
be so, Juliet ! It may be so. I do not know. I have not 
found Him yet. Help me to find Him. Let us seek Him 
together. If you find Him you can not lose your husband. 
If Love is Lord of the world, love must yet be Lord in his 
heart. It will wake, if not sooner, yet when the bitterness 
has worn itself out, as Mr. Wingfold says all evil must, be- 
cause its heart is death and not life.” 

“ I don’t care a straw for life. If I could but find my 
husband, I would gladly die forever in his arms. It is not 
true that the soul longs for immortality. I don’t. I long 
only for love— for forgiveness — for my husband.” 

“ But would you die so long as there was the poorest 
chance of regaining your place in his heart ? ” 

“ No. Give me the feeblest chance of that, and I will 
live. I could live forever on the mere hope of it.” 

“ I can’t give you any hope, but I have hope of it in my 
own heart.” 

Juliet rose on her elbow. 

But I am disgraced ! ” she said, almost indignantly. 
“ It would be disgrace to him to take me again ! I remem- 
ber one of the officers’ wives . No, no ! he hates and 

despises me. Besides I could never look one of his friends 
in the face again. Every body will say I ran away 
with some one — or that he sent me away because I was 
wicked. You all had a prejudice against me from the very 
first.” 

“ Yes, in a way,” confessed Dorothy. “ It always seemed 
as if we did not know you and could not get at you, as if 
you avoided us — with your heart, I mean ; — as if you had 
resolved we should not know you — as if you had something 
you were afraid we should discover.” 

“ Ah, there it was, you see ! ” cried Juliet. ‘‘ And now 
the hidden thing is revealed ! That was it : I never could 


PAUL FABER. 


261 


get rid of the secret that was gnawing at my life. Even 
when I was hardly aware of it, it was there. Oh, if I had 
only been ugly, then Paul would never have thought of me ! ” 

She threw herself down again and buried her face. 

“ Hide me ; hide me,” she went on, lifting to Dorothy 
her hands clasped in an agony, while her face continued 
turned from her. “ Let me stay here. Let me die in 
peace. Nobody would ever think I was here.” 

“That is just what has been coming and going in my 
mind,” answered Dorothy. “ It is a strange old place : you 
might be here for months and nobody know.” 

“ Oh ! wouldn’t you mind it ? I shouldn’t live long. I 
couldn’t, you know ! ” 

“ I will be your very sister, if you will let me,” replied 
Dorothy ; “ only then you must do what I tell you — and 
begin at once by promising not to leave the house till I 
come back to you.” 

As she spoke she rose. 

“ But some one will come,” said Juliet, half-rising, as if 
she would run after her. 

“ No one will. But if any one should — come here, I will 
show you a place where nobody would find you.” 

She helped her to rise, and led her from the room to a 
door in a rather dark passage. This she opened, and, 
striking a light, showed an ordinary closet, with pegs for 
hanging garments upon. The sides of it were paneled, 
and in one of them, not readily distinguishable, was another 
door. It opened into a room lighted only by a little window 
high up in a wall, through whose dusty, cobwebbed panes, 
crept a modicum of second-hand light from a stair. 

“ There ! ” said Dorothy. “ If you should hear any 
sound before I come back, run in here. See what a bolt 
there is to the door. Mind you shut both. You can close 
that shutter over the window too if you like — only nobody 
can look in at it without getting a ladder, and there isn’t 
one about the place. I don’t believe any one knows of this 
room but myself.” 

Juliet was too miserable to be frightened at the look of it — 
which was wretched enough. She promised not to leave 
the house, ahd Dorothy went. Many times before she 
returned had Juliet fled from the sounds of imagined 
approach, and taken refuge in the musty dusk of the room 
withdrawn. When at last Dorothy came, she found her in 
it trembling. 


262 


PAUL FABER. 


She came, bringing a basket with every thing needful for 
breakfast. She had not told her father any thing : he was 
too simple, she said to herself, to keep a secret with com- 
fort ; and she would risk any thing rather than discovery 
while yet she did not clearly know what ought to be done. 
Her version of the excellent French proverb — Dafis le doutCy 
abstiens-toi — was. When you are not sure^ wait — which goes 
a little further, inasmuch as it indicates expectation, and 
may imply faith. With difficulty she prevailed upon her to 
take some tea, and a little bread and butter, feeding her 
like a child, and trying to comfort her with hope. Juliet 
sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, the very picture 
of despair, white like alabaster, rather than marble — with a 
bluish whiteness. Her look was of one utterly lost. 

“ We’ll let the fire out now,” said Dorothy ; “ for the sun 
is shining in warm, and there had better be no smoke. 
The wood is rather scarce too. I will get you some more, 
and here are matches : you can light it again when you 
please.” 

She then made her a bed on the floor with a quantity of 
wood shavings, and some shawls she had brought, and when 
she had lain down upon it, kneeled beside her, and covering 
her face with her hands, tried to pray. But it seemed as if 
all the misery of humanity was laid upon her, and God 
would not speak : not a sound would come from her throat, 
till she burst into tears and sobs. It struck a strange 
chord in the soul of the wife to hear the maiden weeping 
over her. But it was no private trouble, it was the great 
need common to all men that opened the fountain of her 
tears. It was hunger after the light that slays the darkness, 
after a comfort to confront every woe, a life to lift above 
death, an antidote to all wrong. It was one of the groan- 
ings of the spirit that can not be uttered in words articulate, 
or even formed into thoughts defined. But Juliet was filled 
only with the thought of herself and her husband, and the 
tears of her friend but bedewed the leaves of her bitterness, 
did not reach the dry roots of her misery. 

Dorothy’s spirit revived when she found herself once 
more alone in the park on her way home the second time. 
She must be of better courage, she said to herself. Strug- 
gling in the Slough of Despond, she had come upon one 
worse mired than she, for whose sake she must search yet 
more vigorously after the hidden stepping-stones — the 
peaks whose bases are the center of the world. 


PAUL FABER. 


263 


** God help me ! ” she said ever and anon as she went, 
and every time she said it, she quickened her pace and 
ran. 

It was just breakfast-time when she reached the house. 
Her father was coming down the stair. 

“ Would you mind, father,” she said as they sat, “ if I 
were to make a room at the Old House a little comfort- 
able ? ” 

“ I mind nothing you please to do, Dorothy,” he answered. 
‘‘ But you must not become a recluse. In your search for 
God, you must not forsake your neighbor.” 

“ If only I could find my neighbor ! ” she returned, with 
a rather sad smile. “ I shall never be able even to look for 
him, I think, till I have found One nearer first.” 

You have surely found your neighbor when you have 
found his wounds, and your hand is on the oil-flask,” said 
her father, who knew her indefatigable in her ministrations. 

I don’t feel it so,” she answered. “ When I am doing 
things for people, my arms seem to be miles long.” 

As soon as her father left the table, she got her basket 
again, filled it from the larder and store-room, laid a book 
or two on the top, and telling Lisbeth she was going to the 
Old House for the rest of the day, set out on her third 
journey thither. To her delight she found J uliet fast asleep. 
She sat down, rather tired, and began to reflect. Her great 
fear was that Juliet would fall ill, and then what was to be 
done ? How was she to take the responsibility of nursing 
her ? But she remembered how the Lord had said she was 
to take no thought for the morrow ; and therewith she began 
to understand the word. She saw that one can not do any 
thing in to-morrow, and that all care which can not be put 
into the work of to-day, is taken out of it. One thing seemed 
clear — that, so long as it was Juliet’s desire to remain con- 
cealed from her husband, she had no right to act against 
that desire. Whether Juliet was right or wrong, a sense of 
security was for the present absolutely necessary to quiet 
her mind. It seemed therefore, the first thing she had to 
do was to make that concealed room habitable for her. It 
was dreadful to think of her being there alone at night, but 
her trouble was too great to leave much room for fear — 
and anyhow there was no choice. So while Juliet slept, 
she set about cleaning it, and hard work she found it. Great 
also was the labor afterward, when, piece by piece, at 
night or in the early morning, she carried thither every 


264 


PAUL FABER. 


thing necessary to make abode in it clean and warm and 
soft. 

The labor of love is its own reward, but Dorothy received 
much more. For, in the fresh impulse and freedom born of 
this service, she soon found, not only that she thought bet- 
ter and more clearly on the points that troubled her, but 
that, thus spending herself, she grew more able to believe 
there must be One whose glory is perfect ministration. Also, 
her anxious concentration of thought upon the usurping 
thoughts of others, with its tendency to diseased action in 
the logical powers, was thereby checked, much to her relief. 
She was not finding an atom of what is called proof ; but 
when the longing heart finds itself able to hope that the per- 
fect is the fact, that the truth is alive, that the lovely is 
rooted in eternal purpose, it can go on without such proof 
as belongs to a lower stratum of things, and can not be had 
in these. When we rise into the mountain air, we require 
no other testimony than that of our lungs that we are in a 
healthful atmosphere. We do not find it necessary to sub- 
mit it to a quantitative analysis ; we are content that we 
breathe with joy, that we grow in strength, become lighter- 
hearted and better-tempered. Truth is a very different 
thing froni fact ; it is the loving contact of the soul with 
spiritual fact, vital and potent. It does its work in the soul 
independently of all faculty or qualification there for setting 
it forth or defending it. Truth in the inward parts is a 
power, not an opinion. It were as poor a matter as any 
held by those who deny it, if it had not its vitality in itself, 
if .it depended upon any buttressing of other and lower 
material. 

How should it be otherwise ? If God be so near as the 
very idea of Him necessitates, what other availing proof of 
His existence can there be, than such awareness as must 
come of the developing relation between Him and us ? The 
most satisfying of intellectual proofs, if such were to be 
had, would be of no value. God would be no nearer to us for 
them all. They would bring about no blossoming of the 
mighty fact. While He was in our very souls, there would 
yet lie between Him and us a gulf of misery, of no- 
knowledge. 

Peace is for those who do the truth, not those who opine 
it. The true man troubled by intellectual doubt, is so 
troubled unto further health and growth. Let him be alive 
and hopeful, above all obedient, and he will be able to wait 


PAUL FABER. 


265 

for the deeper content which must follow with completer 
insight. Men may say such a man but deceives himself, 
that there is nothing of the kind he pleases himself with 
imagining ; but this is at least worth reflecting upon — that 
while the man who aspires fears he may be deceiving him- 
self, it is the man who does not aspire who asserts that he 
is. One day the former may be sure, and the latter may cease 
to deny, and begin to doubt. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE doctor’s study. 

Paul Faber’s condition, as he sat through the rest of that 
night in his study, was about as near absolute misery as a 
man’s could well be, in this life, I imagine. The woman he 
had been watching through the first part of it as his essen- 
tial bliss, he had left in a swoon, lying naked on the floor, 
and would not and did not go near her again. How could 

he ? Had he not been duped, sold, married to ? — That 

way madness lay ! His pride was bitterly wounded. Would 
it had been mortally ! but pride seems in some natures to 
thrive upon wounds, as in others does love. Faber’s pride 
grew and grew as he sat and brooded, or, rather, was 
brooded upon. 

He, Paul Faber, who knew his own worth, his truth, his 
love, his devotion — he, with his grand ideas of woman and 
purity and unity, conscious of deserving a woman’s best 
regards — he, whose love (to speak truly his unworded, unde- 
fined impression of himself) any woman might be proud to 
call hers — he to be thus deceived ! to have taken to his 
bosom one who had before taken another to hers, and 
thought it yet good enough for him ! It would not bear 
thinking ! Indignation and bitterest sense of wrong almost 
crazed him. For evermore he must be a hypocrite, going 
about with the knowledge of that concerning himself which 
he would not have known by others ! This was how the 
woman, whom he had brought back from death with the life 
of his own heart, had served him ! Years ago she had sac- 
rificed her bloom to some sneaking wretch who flattered a 


266 


PAUL FABER. 


God with prayers, then enticed and bewitched and married 
him ! 

In all this thinking there was no thought but for himself 
— not one for the woman whose agony had been patent 
even to his wrath-blinded eyes. In what is the wretched- 
ness of our condition more evident than in this, that the 
sense of wrong always makes us unjust ? It is a most hum- 
bling thought. God help us. He forgot how she had 
avoided him, resisted him, refused to confess the love which 
his goodness, his importunities, his besieging love had com- 
pelled in her heart. It was true she ought either to have 
refused him absolutely and left him, or confessed and left 
the matter with him ; but he ought to have remembered 
for another, if ever he had known it for himself, the hard- 
ness of some duties ; and what duty could be more tortur- 
ing to a delicate-minded woman than either of those — to 
leave the man she loved in passionate pain, sore-wounded 
with a sense of undeserved cruelty, or to give him the 
strength to send her from him by confessing to his face 
what she could not recall in the solitude of her own cham- 
ber but the agony would break out wet on her forehead ! 
We do our brother, our sister, grievous wrong, every time 
that, in our selfish justice, we forget the excuse that miti- 
gates the blame. That God never does, for it would be to 
disregard the truth. As He will never admit a false excuse, 
so will He never neglect a true one. It may be He makes 
excuses which the sinner dares not think of ; while the 
most specious of false ones shrivel into ashes before Him. 
A man is bound to think of all just excuse for his offender, 
for less than the righteousness of God will not serve his 
turn. 

I would not have my reader set Faber down as heartless. 
His life showed the contrary. But his pride was roused to 
such furious self-assertion, that his heart lay beaten down 
under the sweep of its cyclone. Its turn was only delayed. 
The heart is always there, and rage is not. The heart is a 
constant, even when most intermittent force. It can bide 
its time. Nor indeed did it now lie quite still ; for the 
thought of that white, self-offered sacrifice, let him rave as 
he would against the stage-trickery of the scene, haunted 
him so, that once and again he had to rouse an evil will to 
restrain him from rushing to clasp her to his bosom. 

Then there was the question : why now had she told him 
all — if indeed she had made a clean breast of it ? Was it 


PAUL FABER. 


267 


from love to him, or reviving honesty in herself? From 
neither, he said. Superstition alone was at the root of it. 
She had been to church, and the preaching of that honest 
idiotic enthusiast, Wingfold, had terrified her. — Alas ! what 
refuge in her terror had she found with her husband ? 

Before morning he had made up his mind as to the course 
he would pursue. He would not publish his own shame, 
but neither would he leave the smallest doubt in her mind 
as to what he thought of her, or what he felt toward her. 
All should be utterly changed between them. He would 
behave to her with extreme, with marked politeness ; he 
would pay her every attention woman could claim, but her 
friend, her husband, he would be no more. His thoughts 
of vengeance took many turns, some of them childish. He 
would always call her Mrs. Faber. Never, except they had 
friends, would he sit in the same room with her. To avoid 
scandal, he would dine with her, if he could not help being 
at home, but when he rose from the table, it would be to go 
to his study. If he happened at any time to be in the room 
with her when she rose to retire, he would light her candle, 
carry it up stairs for her, open the door, make her a polite 
bow, and leave her. Never once would he cross the thres- 
hold of her bedroom. She should have plenty of money ; 
the purse of an adventuress was a greedy one, but he would 
do his best to fill it, nor once reproach her with extrava- 
gance — of which fault, let me remark, she had never yet 
shown a sign. He would refuse her nothing she asked of 
him — except it were in any way himself. As soon as his 
old aunt died, he would get her a brougham, but never 
would he sit in it by her side. Such, he thought, would be 
the vengeance of a gentleman. Thus he fumed and raved 
and trifled, in an agony of selfish suffering — a proud, 
injured man ; and all the time the object of his vengeful 
indignation was lying insensible on the spot where she had 
prayed to him, her loving heart motionless within a bosom 
of ice. 

In the morning he went to his dressing-room, had his 
bath, and went down to breakfast, half-desiring his wife^s 
appearance, that he might begin his course of vindictive 
torture. He could not eat, and was just rising to go out, 
when the door opened, and the parlor-maid, who served 
also as Juliet’s attendant, appeared. 

“ I can’t find mis’ess nowhere, sir,” she said. 

Faber understood at once that she had left him, and a 


268 


PAUL FABER. 


terror, neither vague nor ill-founded, possessed itself of 
him. He sprung from his seat, and darted up the stair to 
her room. Little more than a glance was necessary to 
assure him that she had gone deliberately, intending it 
should be forever. The diamond ring lay on her dressing- 
table, spending itself in flashing back the single ray of the 
sun that seemed to have stolen between the curtains to find 
it ; her wedding ring lay beside it, and the sparkle of the 
diamonds stung his heart like a demoniacal laughter over 
it, the more horrible that it was so silent and so lovely : it 
was but three days since, in his wife’s presence, he had been 
justifying suicide with every argument he could bring to 
bear. It was true he ■ had insisted on a proper regard to 
circumstances, and especially on giving due consideration 
to the question, whether the act would hurt others more 
than it would relieve the person contemplating it ; but, 
after the way he had treated her, there could be no doubt 
how Juliet, if she thought of it at all, was compelled to 
answer it. He rushed to the stable, saddled Ruber, and 
galloped wildly away. At the end of the street he remem- 
bered that he had not a single idea to guide him. She was 
lying dead somewhere, but whether to turn east or west or 
north or south to find her, he had not the slightest notion. 
His condition was horrible. For a moment or two he was 
ready to blow his brains out : that, if the orthodox were 
right, was his only chance for over-taking her. What a 
laughing-stock he would then be to them all ! The strangest, 
wildest, maddest thoughts came and went as of themselves, 
and when at last he found himself seated on Ruber in the 
middle of the street, an hour seemed to have passed. It 
was but a few moments, and the thought that roused him 
was : could she have betaken herself to her old lodging at 
Owlkirk ? It was not likely ; it was possible : he would ride 
and see. 

“ They will say I murdered her,” he said to himself as he 
rode — so little did he expect ever to see her again. “ I 
don’t care. They may prove it if they can, and hang me. I 
shall make no defense. It will be but a fit end to the farce 
of life.” 

He laughed aloud, struck his spurs in Ruber’s flanks, 
and rode wildly. He was desperate. He knew neither 
what he felt nor what he desired. If he had found her 
alive, he would, I do not doubt, have behaved to her cruelly. 
His life had fallen in a heap about him ; he was ruined, 


PAUL FABER. 


269 

and she had done it, he said, he thought, he believed. He 
was not aware how much of his misery was occasioned by 
a shrinking dread of the judgments of people he despised. 
Had he known it, he v/ould have been yet more miserable, 
for he would have scorned himself for it. There is so much 
in us that is beyond our reach ! 

Before arriving at Owlkirk, he made up his mdnd that, if 
she were not there, he would ride to the town of Broughill 
— not in the hope of any news of her, but because there 
dwelt the only professional friend he had in the neighbor- 
hood — one who sympathized with his view of things, and 
would not close his heart against him because he did not 
believe that this horrid, ugly, disjointed thing of a world 
had been made by a God of love. Generally, he had been 
in the habit of dwelling on the loveliness of its develop- 
ments, and the beauty of the gradual adaptation of life to 
circumstance ; but now it was plainer to him than ever, that, 
if made at all, it was made by an evil being ; ‘‘ — for,” he 
said, and said truly, “ a conscious being without a heart 
must be an evil being.” This was the righteous judgment 
of a man who could, by one tender, consoling word, have 
made the sun rise upon a glorious world of conscious 
womanhood, but would not say that word, and left that 
world lying in the tortured chaos of a slow disintegration. 
This conscious being with a heart, this Paul Faber, who saw 
that a God of love was the only God supposable, set his own 
pride so far above love, that his one idea was, to satisfy the 
justice of his outraged dignity by the torture of the sinner ! 
— even while all the time dimly aware of rebuke in his soul. 
If she should have destroyed herself, he said once and again 
as he rode, was it more than a just sacrifice to his wronged 
honor ? As such he would accept it. If she had, it was 
best — best for her, and best for him ! What so much did it 
matter ! She was very lovely ! — true — but what was the 
quintessence of dust to him ? Where either was there any 
great loss ? He and she would soon be wrapped up in the 
primal darkness, the mother and grave of all things, to- 
gether ! — no, not together ; not even in the dark of nothing- 
ness could they two any more lie together ! Hot tears 
forced their way into his eyes, whence they rolled down- 
the lava of the soul, scorching his cheeks. He struck his 
spurs into Ruber fiercely, and rode madly on. 

At length he neared the outskirts of Broughill. He had 
ridden at a fearful pace across country, leaving all to hi? 


PAUL FABER. 


270 

horse, who had carried him wisely as well as bravely. But 
Ruber, although he had years of good work left in him, was 
not in his first strength, and was getting exhausted with his 
wild morning. For, all the way, his master, apparently 
unconscious of every thing else, had been immediately aware 
of the slightest slackening of muscle under him, the least 
faltering of the onward pace, and, in the temper of the sav- 
age, which wakes the moment the man of civilization is hard 
put to it, the moment he flagged, still drove the cruel spurs 
into his flanks, when the grand, unresenting creature would 
rush forward at straining speed — not, I venture to think, so 
much in obedience to the pain, as in obedience to the will of 
his master, fresh recognized through the pain. 

Close to the high road, where they were now approaching 
it through the fields, a rail-fence had just been put up, 
inclosing a piece of ground which the owner wished to let 
for building. That the fact might be known, he was about 
to erect a post with a great board announcing it. For this 
post a man had dug the hole, and then gone to his dinner. 
The inclosure lay between Faber and the road, in the direct 
line he was taking. On went Ruber blindly — more blindly 
than his master knew, for, with the prolonged running, he 
had partially lost his sight, so that he was close to the fence 
before he saw it. But he rose boldly, and cleared it — to 
light, alas ! on the other side with a foreleg in the hole. 
Down he came with a terrible crash, pitched his master into 
the road upon his head, and lay groaning with a broken leg. 
Faber neither spoke nor moved, but lay as he fell. A poor 
woman ran to his assistance, and finding she could do noth- 
ing for him, hurried to the town for help. His friend, who 
was the first surgeon in the place, flew to the spot, and had 
him carried to his house. It was a severe case of concus- 
sion of the brain. 

Poor old Ruber was speedily helped to a world better 
than this for horses, I trust. 

Meantime Glaston was in commotion. The servants had 
spread the frightful news that their mistress had vanished, 
and their master ridden off like a madman. “ But he won’t 
find her alive, poor lady ! I don’t think,” was the general 
r.-j^ose of their communication, accompanied by a would-be 
/rise and really sympathetic shake of the head. In this 
conclusion most agreed, for there was a general impression 
of something strange about her, partly occasioned by the 
mysterious way in which Mrs. Puckridge had spoken con- 


PAUL FABER. 


271 


cerning her illness and the marvelous thing the doctor had 
done to save her life. People now supposed that she had 
gone suddenly mad, or, rather, that the latent madness so 
plain to read in those splendid eyes of hers had been sud- 
denly developed, and that under its influence she had rushed 
away, and probably drowned herself. Nor were there 
wanting, among the discontented women of Glaston, some 
who regarded the event — vaguely to their own consciousness, 
I gladly admit — as abnost a judgment upon Faber for marry- 
ing a woman of whom nobody knew any thing. 

Hundreds went out to look for the body down the river. 
Many hurried to an old quarry, half full of water, on the 
road to Broughill, and peered horror-stricken over the edge, 
but said nothing. The boys of Glaston were mainly of a 
mind that the pond at the Old House was of all places the 
most likely to attract a suicide, for with the fascination of 
its horrors they were themselves acquainted. Thither there- 
fore they sped ; and soon Glaston received its expected 
second shock in the tidings that a lady’s bonnet had been 
found floating in the frightful pool : while in the wet mass 
the boys brought back with them, some of her acquaintance 
recognized with certainty a bonnet they had seen Mrs. Faber 
wear. There was no room left for doubt ; the body of the 
poor lady was lying at the bottom of the pool ! A multi- 
tude rushed at once to the spot, although they knew it was 
impossible to drag the pool, so deep was it, and for its depth 
so small. Neither would she ever come to the surface, they 
said, for the pikes and eels would soon leave nothing but 
the skeleton. So Glaston took the whole matter for ended, 
and began to settle down again to its own affairs, condoling 
greatly with the poor gentleman, such a favorite ! who, so 
young, and after such a brief experience of marriage, had 
lost, in such a sad way, a wife so handsome, so amiable, 
so clever. But some said a doctor ought to have known 
better than marry such a person, however handsome, and 
they hoped it would be a lesson to him. On the whole, so 
sorry for him was Glaston, that, if the doctor could then 
have gone about it invisible, he would have found he had 
more friends and fewer enemies than he had supposed, 

For the first two or three days no one was surprised 
he did not make his appearance. They thougfif he wa^ 
upon some false trail. But when four days had elapse^ 
and no news was heard of him, for his friend knew nothing 
of what had happened, ii^d written ^o Mrs. Faber, and th^ 


272 


PAUL FABER. 


letter lay unopened, some began to hint that he must have 
had a hand in his wife’s disappearance, and to breathe a 
presentiment that he would never more be seen in Glaston. 
On the morning of the fifth day, however, his accident was 
known, and that he was lying insensible at the house of his 
friend. Dr. May ; whereupon, although here and there might 
be heard the expression of a pretty strong conviction as to 
the character of the visitation, the sympathy both felt and 
uttered was larger than before. The other medical men 
immediately divided his practice amongst them, to keep it 
together against his possible return, though few believed he 
would ever again look on scenes darkened bysthe memory 
of bliss so suddenly blasted. 

For weeks his recovery was doubtful, during which time, 
even if they had dared, it would have been useless to 
attempt acquainting him with what all believed the cer- 
tainty of his loss. But when at length he woke to a mem- 
ory of the past, and began to desire information, his friend 
was compelled to answer his questions. He closed his lips, 
bowed his head on his breast, gave a great sigh, and held 
his peace. Every one saw that he was terribly stricken. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE MIND OF JULIET. 

There was one, however, who, I must confess, was not a 
little relieved at the news of what had befallen Faber. For, 
although far from desiring his death, which indeed would 
have ruined some of her warmest hopes for Juliet, Dorothy 
greatly dreaded meeting him. She was a poor dissembler, 
hated even the shadow of a lie, and here was a fact, which, 
if truth could conceal it, must not be known. Her dread 
had been, that, the first time she saw Faber, it would be 
beyond her power to look innocent, that her knowledge 
would be legible in her face ; and much she hoped their first 
encounter might be in the presence of Helen or some other 
ignorant friend, behind whose innocent front she might 
shelter her conscious secrecy. To truth such a silence must 
feel like a culpable deception, and I do not think such a 


PAUL FABER. 


273 


painful position can ever arise except from wrong some- 
where. Dorothy could not tell a lie. She could not try to 
tell one ; and if she had tried, she would have been instantly 
discovered through the enmity of her very being to the lie 
she told ; from her lips it would have been as transparent 
as the truth. It is no wonder therefore that she felt 
relieved when first she heard of the durance in which Faber 
was lying. But she felt equal to the withholding from Juliet 
of the knowledge of her husband’s condition for the present. 
She judged that, seeing she had saved her friend’s life, she 
had some right to think and choose for the preservation of 
that life. 

Meantime she must beware of security, and cultivate 
caution ; and so successful was she, that weeks passed, and 
not a single doubt associated Dorothy with knowledge 
where others desired to know. Not even her father had a 
suspicion in the direction of the fact. She knew he would 
one day approve both of what she did, and of her silence 
concerning it. To tell him, thoroughly as he was to be 
trusted, would be to increase the risk ; and besides, she had 
no right to reveal a woman’s secret to a man. 

It was a great satisfaction, however, notwithstanding her 
dread of meeting him, to hear that Faber had at length 
returned to Glaston ; for if he had gone away, how could 
they have ever known what to do? For one thing, if he 
were beyond their knowledge, he might any day, in full con- 
fidence, go and marry again. 

Her father not unfrequently accompanied her to the Old 
House, but Juliet and she had arranged such signals, and 
settled such understandings, that the simple man saw noth- 
ing, heard nothing, forefelt nothing. Now and then a little 
pang would quaver through Dorothy’s bosom, when she 
caught sight of him peering down into the terrible dusk of 
the pool, or heard him utter some sympathetic hope for the 
future of poor Faber ; but she comforted herself with the 
thought of how glad he would be when she was able to tell 
him all, and how he would laugh over the story of their pre- 
cautions against himself. 

Her chief anxiety was for Juliet’s health, even more for 
the sake of avoiding discovery, than for its own. When the 
nights were warm she would sometimes take her out in the 
park, and every day, one time or another, would make her 
walk in the garden while she kept watch on the top of the 
steep slope. Her father would sometimes remark to a friend 


274 


PAUL FABER. 


how Dorothy's love of solitude seemed to grow upon her ; 
but the remark suggested nothing, and slowly Juliet was 
being forgotten at Glaston. 

It seemed to Dorothy strange that she did not fall ill. 
For the first few days she was restless and miserable as 
human being could be. She had but one change of mood : 
either she would talk feverously, or sit in the gloomiest si- 
lence, now and then varied with a fit of abandoned weeping. 
Every time Dorothy came from Glaston, she would over- 
whelm her with questions — which at first Dorothy could 
easily meet, for she spoke absolute fact when she said she 
knew nothing ^concerning her husband. When at length 
the cause of his absence was understood, she told her he 
was with his friend. Dr. May, at Broughill. Knowing the 
universal belief that she had committed suicide, nothing 
could seem more natural. But when, day after day, she 
heard the same thing for weeks, she began to fear he would 
never be able to resume his practice, at least at Glaston, 
and wept bitterly at the thought of the evil she had brought 
upon him who had given her life, and love to boot. For 
her heart was a genuine one, and dwelt far more on the 
wrong her too eager love had done him, than on the hard- 
ness with which he had resented it. Nay, she admired him 
for the fierceness of his resentment, witnessing, in her eyes, 
to the purity of the man whom his neighbors regarded as 
wicked. 

After the first day, she paid even less heed to any thing 
of a religious kind with which Dorothy, in the strength 
of her own desire after a perfect stay, sought to rouse or 
console her. When Dorothy ventured on such ground, 
which grew more and more seldom, she would sit list- 
less, heedless, with a far-away look. Sometimes when 
Dorothy fancied she had been listening a little, her next 
words would show that her thoughts had been only with 
her husband. When the subsiding of the deluge of her 
agony, allowed words to carry meaning to her, any hint 
at supernal consolation made her angry, and she rejected 
every thing Dorothy said, almost with indignation. To seem 
even to accept such comfort, she would have regarded 
as traitorous to her husband. Not the devotion of the friend 
who gave up to her all of her life she could call her own, 
sufficed to make her listen even with a poor patience. So 
absorbed was she in her trouble, that she had no feeling of 
what poor Dorothy had done for her. How can I blame 


i 


PAUL FABER. 


275 


her, poor lady ! If existence was not a thing to be enjoyed, 
as for her it certainly was not at present, how was she to be 
thankful for what seemed its preservation ? There was 
much latent love to Dorothy in her heart ; I may go further 
and say there was much latent love to God in her heart, 
only the latter was very latent as yet. When her heart was 
a little freer from grief and the agony of loss, she would love 
Dorothy ; but God must wait with his own patience — wait 
long for the child of His love to learn that her very sorrow 
came of His dearest affection. Who wants such affection as 
that ? says the unloving. No one, I answer ; but every one 
who comes to know it, glorifies it as the only love that ever 
could satisfy his being. 

Dorothy, who had within her the chill of her own doubt, 
soon yielded to Juliet’s coldness, and ceased to say anything 
that could be called religious. She saw that it was not the 
time to speak ; she must content herself with being. Nor 
had it ever been any thing very definite she could say. She 
had seldom gone beyond the expression of her own hope, 
and the desire that her friend would look up. She could 
say that all the men she knew, from books or in life, of the 
most delicate honesty, the most genuine repentance, the most 
rigid self-denial, the loftiest aspiration, were Christian men ; 
but she could neither say her knowledge of history or of 
life was large, nor that, of the men she knew who professed 
to believe, the greater part were honest, or much ashamed, 
or rigid against themselves, or lofty toward God. She saw 
that her part was not instruction, but ministration, and that 
in obedience to Jesus in whom she hoped to believe. What 
matter that poor Juliet denied Him? If God commended 
His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ 
4ied for us. He would be pleased with the cup of cold water 
given to one that was not a disciple. Dorothy dared not say 
she was a disciple herself ; she dared only say that right 
gladly would she become one, if she could. If only the 
lovely, the good, the tender, the pure, the grand, the adorable, 
were also the absolutely true ! — true not in the human idea 
only, but in absolute fact, in divine existence ! If the story of 
Jesus was true, then joy to the universe, for all was well ! 
She waited, and hoped, and prayed and ministered. ^ 

There is a great power in quiet, for God is in it. Not 
seldom He seems to lay His hand on one of His children, as 
a mother lays hers on the restless one in the crib, to still him. 
Then the child sleeps, but the man begins to live up from 


276 


PAUL FABER. 


the lower depths of his nature. So the winter comes to still 
the plant whose life had been rushing to blossom and fruit. 
When the hand of God is laid upon a man, vain moan, and 
struggle and complaint, it may be indignant outcry follows ; 
but when,outwearied at last, he yields, if it be in dull submis- 
sion to the inexorable, and is still, then the God at the heart 
of him, the God that is there or the man could not be, begins 
to grow. This point Juliet had not yet reached, and her 
trouble went on. She saw no light, no possible outlet. Her 
cries, her longings, her agonies, could not reach even the ears, 
could never reach the heart of the man who had cast her 
off. He believed her dead, might go and marry another, 
and what would be left her then ? Nothing but the death 
from which she now restrained herself, lest, as Dorothy had 
taught her, she should deny him the fruits of a softening 
heart and returning love. The moment she heard that he 
sought another, she would seek Death and assuredly find 
him. One letter she would write to leave behind her, and 
then go. He should see and understand that the woman he 
despised for the fault of the girl, was yet capable of the 
noblest act of a wife : she would die that he might live — 
that it might be well with her husband. Having entertained, 
comprehended and settled this idea in her mind, she became 
quieter. After this, Dorothy might have spoken without 
stirring up so angry an opposition. But it w^as quite as well 
she did not know it, and did not speak. 

I have said that Dorothy wondered she did not fall ill. 
There was a hope in Juliet’s mind of which she had not 
spoken, but upon which, though vaguely, she built further 
hope, and which may have had part in her physical en- 
durance : the sight of his baby might move the heart of her 
husband to pardon her ! 

But the time, even with the preoccupation of misery, grew 
very dreary. She had never had any resources in herself 
except her music, and even if here she had had any oppor- 
tunity of drawing upon that, what is music but a mockery 
to a breaking heart ? Was music ever born of torture, of 
misery ? It is only when the cloud of sorrow is sinking in 
the sun-rays, that the song-larks awake and ascend. A 
glory of some sort must fringe the skirts of any sadness, the 
light of the sorrowing soul itself must be shed upon it, and 
the cloud must be far enough removed to show the reflected 
light, before it will yield any of the stuff of which songs are 
made. And this light that gathers in song, what is it but 


PAUL FABER. 


277 


hope behind the sorrow — hope so little recognized as such, 
that it is often called despair ? It is reviving and not decay 
that sings even the saddest of songs. 

Juliet had had little consciousness of her own being as an 
object of reflection. Joy and sorrow came and went ; she 
had never brooded. Never until now, had she known any 
very deep love. Even that she bore her father had not 
ripened into the grand love of the woman-child. She for- 
got quickly ; she hoped easily ; she had had some courage, 
and naturally much activity ; she faced necessity by instinct, 
and took almost no thought for the juorrow — but this after 
the fashion of the birds, not after the fashion required of 
those who can consider the birds ; it is one thing to take no 
thought, for want of thought, and another to take no 
thought, from sufficing thought, whose flower is confidence. 
The one way is the lovely way of God in the birds — the 
other. His lovelier way in his men and women. She had in 
her the making of a noble woman — only that is true of every 
woman ; and it was no truer of her than of every other 
woman, that, without religion, she could never be, in any 
worthy sense, a woman at all. I know how narrow and absurd 
this will sound to many of my readers, but such simply do not 
know what religion means, and think I do not know what a 
woman means. Hitherto her past had always turned to a dream 
as it glided away from her ; but now, in the pauses of her 
prime agony, the tide rose from the infinite sea to which her 
river ran, and all her past was borne -back upon her, even to 
her far-gone childish quarrels with her silly mother, and the 
neglect and disobedience she had too often been guilty of 
toward her father. And the center of her memories was 
the hot coal of that one secret ; around that they all burned 
and hissed. Now for the first time her past was, and she 
cowered and fled from it, a slave to her own history, to her 
own deeds, to her own concealment. Alas, like many 
another terror-stricken child, to whom the infinite bosom of 
tenderness and love stretches out arms of shelter and heal- 
ing and life, she turned to the bosom of death, and imagined 
there a shelter of oblivious darkness ! For life is a thing so 
deep, so high, so pure, so far above the reach of common 
thought, that, although shadowed out in all the harmonic 
glories of color, and speech, and song, and scent, and 
motion, and shine, yea, even of eyes and loving hands, to 
common minds — and the more merely intellectual, the com- 
moner are they — it seems but a phantasm. To unchildlike 


278 


PAUL FABER. 


minds, the region of love and worship, to which lead the 
climbing stairs of duty, is but a nephelocockygia ; they ac- 
knowledge the stairs, however, thank God, and if they will 
but climb, a hand will be held out to them. Now, to pray 
to a God, the very thought of whose possible existence 
might seem enough to turn the coal of a dead life into a 
diamond of eternal radiance, is with many such enough to 
stamp a man a fool. It will surprise me nothing in the new 
world to hear such men, finding they are not dead after all, 
begin at once to argue that they were quite right in refusing 
to act upon any bare possibility — forgetting that the ques- 
tioning of possibilities has been the source of all scientific 
knowledge. They may say that to them there seemed no 
possibility ; upon which will come the question — whence 
arose their incapacity for seeing it ? In the meantime, that 
the same condition which constitutes the bliss of a child, 
should also be the essential bliss of a man, is incomprehensible 
to him in whom the child is dead, or so fast asleep that noth- 
ing but a trumpet of terror can awake him. That the rules 
of the nursery — I mean the nursery where the true mother is 
the present genius, not the hell at the top of a London 
house — that the rules of the nursery over which broods a 
wise mother with outspread wings of tenderness, should be 
the laws also of cosmic order, of a world’s well-being, of 
national greatness, and of all personal dignity, may well be 
an old-wives’-fable to the man who dabbles at saving the 
world by science, education, hygiene and other economics. 
There is a knowledge that will do it, but of that he knows 
so little, that he will not allow it to be a knowledge at all. 
Into what would he save the world ? His paradise would 
prove a ten times more miserable condition than that out 
of which he thought to rescue it. 

But any thing that gives objectivity to trouble, that lifts 
the cloud so far that, if but for a moment, it shows itself a 
cloud, instead of being felt an enveloping, penetrating, 
palsying mist — setting it where the mind can in its turn 
prey upon it, can play with it, paint it, may come to sing of 
it, is a great help toward what health may yet be possible 
for the troubled soul. With a woman’s instinct, Dorothy 
borrowed from the curate a volume of acertain more attract- 
ive edition of Shakespeare than she herself possessed, and 
left it in Juliet’s way, so arranged that it should open at the 
tragedy of Othello. She thought that, if she could be 
drawn into sympathy with suffering like, but different and 


PAUL FABER. 


279 


apart from her own, it would take her a little out of herself, 
and might lighten the pressure of her load. Now Juliet 
had never read a play of Shakespeare in her life, and knew 
Othello only after the vulgar interpretation, as the type, 
that is, of jealousy ; but when, in a pause of the vague 
reverie of feeling which she called thought, a touch of ennui 
supervening upon suffering, she began to read the play, the 
condition of her own heart afforded her the insight neces- 
sary for descrying more truly the Othello of Shakespeare’s 
mind. She wept for Desdemona’s innocence and hard fate ; 
but she pitied more the far harder fate of Othello, and found 
the death of both a consolation for the trouble their troubles 
had stirred up in her. 

The curate was in the habit of scribbling on his books, 
and at the end of the play, which left a large blank on the 
page, had written a few verses : as she sat dreaming over 
the tragedy, Juliet almost unconsciously took them in. 
They were these : 

In the hot hell o’ 

Jealousy shines Othello— 

Love in despair, 

An angel in flames ! 

While pure Desdemona 
Waits him alone, a 
Ghost in the air. 

White v/ith his blames. 

Becoming suddenly aware of their import, she burst out 
weeping afresh, but with a very different weeping — Ah, if 
it might be so ! Soon then had the repentant Othello, rush- 
ing after his wife, explained all, and received easiest par- 
don : he had but killed her. Her Paul would not even do 
that for her ! He did not love her enough for that. If 
she had but thrown herself indeed into the lake, then 
perhaps — who could tell ! — she might now be nearer to him 
than she should ever be in this world. 

All the time, Dorothy was much and vainly exercised as 
to what might become possible for the bringing of them 
together again. But it was not as if any misunderstanding 
had arisen between them : such a difficulty might any 
moment be removed by an explanation. The thing that 
divided them was the original misunderstanding, which lies, 
deep and black as the pit, between every soul and the soul 
next it, where self and not God is the final thought. The 


28 o 


PAUL FABER. 


gulf is forever crossed by bright shoots of everlasting- 
ness,” the lightnings of involuntary affection ; but nothing 
less than the willed love of an infinite devotion will serve to 
close it ; any moment it may be lighted up from beneath, 
and the horrible distance between them be laid bare. Into 
this gulf it was that, with absolute gift of himself, the Lord, 
doing like his Father, cast Himself ; and by such devotion 
alone can His disciples become fellow-workers with Him, 
help to slay the evil self in the world, and rouse the holy 
self to like sacrifice, that the true, the eternal life of men, 
may arise jubilant and crowned. Then is the old man of 
claims and rights and disputes and fears, re-born a child 
whose are all things and who claims and fears nothing. 

In ignorance of Faber’s mood, whether he mourned over 
his harshness, or justified himself in resentment, Dorothy 
could but wait, and turned herself again to think what 
could be done for the consolation of her friend. 

Could she, knowing her prayer might be one which God 
would not grant, urge her to pray ! For herself, she knew, 
if there was a God, what she desired must be in accordance 
with His will ; but if Juliet cried to him to give her back her 
husband, and He did not, would not the silent refusal, the 
deaf ear of Heaven, send back the cry in settled despair upon 
her spirit ? With her own fear Dorothy feared for her 
friend. She had not yet come to see that, in whatever 
trouble a man may find himself, the natural thing being to 
make his request known, his brother may heartily tell him 
to pray. Why, what can a man do but pray ? He is here 
— helpless ; and his Origin, the breather of his soul, his 
God, may be somewhere. And what else should he pray 
about but the thing that troubles him? Not surely the 
thing that does not trouble him ? What is the trouble 
there for, but to make him cry ? It is the pull of God at 
his being. Let a man only pray. Prayer is the sound to 
which not merely is the ear of the Father open, but for 
which that ear is listening. Let him pray for the thing he 
thinks he needs : for what else, I repeat, can he pray ? Let 
a man cry for that in whose loss life is growing black : the 
heart of the Father is open. Only let the man know that, ' 
even for his prayer, the Father will not give him a stone. 
But let the man pray, and let God see to it how to answer 
him. If in his childishness and ignorance he should ask 
for a serpent, he will not give him a serpent. But it may 
yet be the Father will find some way of giving him his 


PAUL FABER. 


281 


heart’s desire. God only knows how rich God is in power 
of gift. See what He has done to make Himself able to give 
to His own heart’s desire. The giving of His Son was as the 
knife with whichHe would divide Himself amongst His chil- 
dren. He knows, He only, the heart, the needs, the deep 
desires, the hungry eternity, of each of them all. There- 
fore let every man ask of God, Who giveth to all men 
liberally and upbraideth not — and see at least what will 
come of it. 

But he will speak like one of the foolish if he say thus : 
“ Let God hear me, and give me my desire, and I will trust 
in Him.” That would be to tempt the Lord his God. If a 
father gives his children their will instead of his, they may 
well turn on him again and say : “ Was it then the part of 

a father to give me a scorpion because, not knowing what it 
was, I asked for it ? I besought him for a fancied joy, and 
lo ! it is a sorrow for evermore ! ” 

But it may be that sometimes God indeed does so, and to 
such a possible complaint has this reply in Himself : ‘‘I 

gave thee what thou wouldst, because not otherwise could I 
teach the stiff-necked his folly. Hadst thou been patient, 
I would have made the thing a joy ere I gave it thee ; I 
would have changed the scorpion into a golden beetle, set 
with rubies and sapphires. Have thou patience now.” 

One thing is clear, that poor Juliet, like most women, 
and more men, would never have begun to learn any thing 
worth learning, if she had not been brought into genuine, 
downright trouble. Indeed I am not sure but some of 
those who seem so good as to require no trouble, are just 
those who have already been most severely tried. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

ANOTHER MIND. 

But while the two ladies were free of all suspicion of 
danger, and indeed were quite safe, they were not alone in 
the knowledge of their secret. There was one who, for 
some time, had been on the track of it, and had long ago 
traced it with certainty to its covert : indeed he had all but 


282 


PAUL FABER. 


seen into it from the first. But, although to his intimate 
friends known as a great and indeed wonderful talker, he 
was generally regarded as a somewhat silent man, and in 
truth possessed to perfection the gift of holding his tongue. 
Except that his outward insignificance was so great as to 
pass the extreme, he was not one to attract attention ; but 
those who knew Wingfold well, heard him speak of Mr. 
Polwarth, the gate-keeper, oftener than of any other ; and 
from what she heard him say, Dorothy had come to have a 
great reverence for the man, although she knew him very 
little. • 

In returning from Nestley with Juliet by her side, Helen 
had taken the road through Osterfield Park. When they 
reached Polwarth’s gate, she had, as a matter of course, 
pulled up, that they might have a talk with the keeper. 
He had, on the few occasions on which he caught a passing 
glimpse of Miss Meredith, been struck with a something in 
her that to him seemed to take from her beauty — that look 
of strangeness, namely, which every one felt, and which I 
imagine to have come of the consciousness of her secret, 
holding her back from blending with the human wave ; and 
now, therefore, while the carriage stood, he glanced often 
at her countenance. 

From long observation, much silence and gentle pon- 
dering ; from constant illness, and frequent recurrence of 
great suffering ; from loving acceptance of the same, and 
hence an overflowing sympathy with every form of humanity, 
even that more dimly revealed in the lower animals, and 
especially suffering humanity ; from deep acquaintance with 
the motions of his own spirit, and the fullest conviction that 
one man is as another ; from the entire confidence of all 
who knew him, and the results of his efforts to help them ; 
above all, from persistently dwelling in the secret place of 
the Most High, and thus entering into the hidden things of 
life from the center whence the issues of them diverged — 
from all these had been developed in him, through wisest 
use, an insight into the natures of men, a power of reading 
the countenance, an apprehension of what was moving in 
the mind, a contact, almost for the moment a junction with 
the goings on of their spirits, which at times revealed to 
him not only character, and prevailing purpose or drift of 
nature, but even the main points of a past moral history. 
Sometimes indeed he would recoil with terror from what 
seemed the threatened dawn in him of a mysterious power, 


PAUL FABER. 


283 

probably latent in every soul, of reading the future of a 
person brought within certain points of spiritual range. 
What startled him, however, may have been simply an 
involuntary conclusion, instantaneously drawn, from the 
plain convergence of all the forces in and upon the individ- 
ual toward a point of final deliverance or of near catas- 
trophe : when “ the mortal instruments ” are steadily work- 
ing for evil, the only hope of deliverance lies in catastrophe. 

When Polwarth had thus an opportunity of reading 
Juliet’s countenance, it was not wearing its usual expres- 
sion : the ferment set at work in her mind by the curate’s 
sermon had intensified the strangeness of it, even to some- 
thing almost of definement ; and it so arrested him that 
after the ponies had darted away like birds, he stood for a 
whole minute in the spot and posture in which they had left 
him. 

“I never saw Polwarth look distrait before,” said the 
curate, and was about to ask Juliet whether she had not 
been bewitching him, when the far-away, miserable look of 
her checked him, and he dropped back into his seat in 
silence. 

But Polwarth had had no sudden insight into Juliet’s 
condition ; all he had seen was, that she was strangely 
troubled — and that with no single feeling ; that there was 
an undecided contest in her spirit ; that something was 
required of her which she had not yet resolved to yield. 
Almost the moment she vanished from his sight, it dawned 
upon him that she had a secret. As one knows by the signs 
of the heavens that the matter of a storm is in them and 
must break out, so Polwarth had read in Juliet’s sky the 
inward throes of a pent convulsion. 

He knew something of the doctor, for he had met him 
again and again where he himself was trying to serve ; 
but they had never had conversation together. Faber 
had not an idea of what was in the creature who repre- 
sented to him one of Nature’s failures at man-making; 
while Polwarth, from what he heard and saw of the 
doctor, knew him better than he knew himself ; and 
although the moment when he could serve him had not 
begun to appear, looked for such a moment to come. 
There was so much good in the man, that his heart 
longed to give him something worth having. How 
Faber would have laughed at the notion ! But Pol- 
warth felt confident that one day the friendly doctor 


284 


PAUL FABER. 


would be led out of the miserable desert where he 
cropped thistles and sage and fancied himself a hero. 
And now in the drawn look of his wife’s face, in the 
broken lights of her eye, in the absorption and the start, he 
thought he perceived the quarter whence unwelcome deliver- 
ance might be on its way, and resolved to keep attention 
awake for what might appear. In his inmost being he knew 
that the mission of man is to help his neighbors. But in as 
much as he was ready to help, he recoiled from meddling. 
To meddle is to destroy the holy chance. Meddlesomeness 
is the very opposite of helpfulness, for it consists in forcing 
your self into another self, instead of opening your self as a 
refuge to the other. They are opposite extremes, and, like 
all extremes, touch. It is not correct that extremes meet ; 
they lean back to back. To Polwarth, a human self was a 
shrine to be approached with reverence, even when he bore 
deliverance in his hand. Anywhere, everywhere, in the 
seventh heaven or the seventh hell, he could worship God 
with the outstretched arms of love, the bended knees of 
joyous adoration, but in helping his fellow, he not only wor- 
shiped but served God — ministered, that is, to the wants of 
God — doing it unto Him in the least of His. He knew that, 
as the Father unresting works for the weal of men, so every 
son, following the Master-Son, must work also. Through 
weakness and suffering he had learned it. But he never 
doubted that his work as much as his bread would be given 
him, never rushed out wildly snatching at something to do 
for God, never helped a lazy man to break stones, never 
preached to foxes. It was what the Father gave him to do 
that he cared to do, and that only. It was the man next 
him that he helped — the neighbor in need of the help he 
had. He did not trouble himself greatly about the hap- 
piness of men, but when the time and the opportunity arrived 
in which to aid the struggling birth of the eternal bliss, the 
whole strength of his being responded to the call. And 
now, having felt a thread vibrate, like a sacred spider he sat 
in the center of his web of love, and waited and watched. 

In proportion as the love is pure, and only in proportion 
to that, can such be a pure and real calling. The least speck 
of self will defile it — a little more may ruin its most hopeful 
effort. 

Two days after, he heard, from some of the boys hurrying 
to the pond, that Mrs. Faber was missing. He followed 
them, and from a spot beyond the house, looking down 


PAUL FABER. 


285 

Upon the lake, watched their proceedings. He saw them 
find her bonnet — a result which left him room to doubt. 
Almost the next moment a wavering film of blue smoke 
rising from the Old House caught his eye. It did not 
surprise him, for he knew Dorothy Drake was in the habit 
of going there — knew also by her face for what she went : 
accustomed to seek solitude himself, he knew the relations' of 
it. Very little had passed between them. Sometimes two 
persons are like two drops running alongside of each other 
down a window-pane : one marvels how it is they can so 
long escape running together. Persons fit to be bosom 
friends will meet and part for years, and never say much 
beyond good-morning and good-night. 

But he bethought him that he had not before known her 
light a fire, and the day certainly was not a cold one. Again, 
how was it that with the cries of the boys in her ears, 
searching for a sight of the body in her very garden, she 
had never come from the house, or even looked from a win- 
dow ? Then it came to his mind what a place for conceal- 
ment the Old House was : he knew every corner of it ; and 
thus he arrived at what was almost the conviction that Mrs. 
Faber was there. When a day or two had passed, he was 
satisfied that, for some reason or other, she was there for 
refuge. The reason must be a good one, else Dorothy would 
not be aiding — and it must of course have to do with her 
husband. 

He next noted how, for some time, Dorothy never went 
through his gate, although he saw reason to believe she went 
to the Old House every day. After a while, however, she 
went through it every day. They always exchanged a few 
words as she passed, and he saw plainly enough that she 
carried a secret. By and by he began to see the hover of 
words unuttered about her mouth ; she wished to speak 
about something but could not quite make up her mind to 
it. He would sometimes meet her look with the corre- 
sponding look of “ Well, what is it? ’’but thereupon she 
would invariably seem to change her mind, would bid him 
good morning, and pass on. 


CHAPTER XL. 


A DESOLATION. 

When Faber at length returned to Glaston, his friends 
were shocked at his appearance. Either the hand of the 
Lord, or the hand of crushing chance, had been heavy upon 
him. A pale, haggard, worn, enfeebled man, with an eye of 
suffering, and a look that shrunk from question, he repaired 
to his desolate house. In the regard of his fellow-townsmen 
he was as Job appeared to the eyes of his friends ; and some 
of them, who knew no more of religion than the sound of 
its name, pitied him that he had not the comfort of it. All 
Glaston was tender to him. He walked feebly, seldom 
showed the ghost of a smile, and then only from kindness, 
never from pleasure. His face was now almost as white as 
that of his lost Juliet. His brother doctors behaved with 
brotherly truth. They had attended to all his patients, 
poor as well as rich, and now insisted that he should 
resume his labors gradually, while they fulfilled his lack. So 
at first he visited only his patients in the town, for he 
was unable to ride ; and his grand old horse. Ruber, in whom 
he trusted, and whom he would have ventured sooner to 
mount than Niger, was gone! For weeks he looked like a man 
of fifty ; and although by degrees the restorative influencespf 
work began to tell upon him, he never recovered the look of 
his years. Nobody tried to comfort him. Few dared, for 
very reverence, speak to the man who carried in him such 
an awful sorrow. Who would be so heartless as counsel 
him to forget it ? and what other counsel was there for one 
who refused like him ? Who could have brought himself to 
say to him — “ There is loveliness yet left, and within thy 
reach : take the good, etc. ; forget the nothing that has been, 
in the something that may yet for awhile avoid being noth- 
ing too ; comfort thy heart with a fresh love : the time will 
come to forget both in the everlasting tomb of the ancient 
darkness ” ? Few men would consent to be comforted in 
accordance with their professed theories of life ; and more 
than most would Faber, at this period of his suffering, have 
scorned such truth for comfort. As it was, men gave him a 
squeeze of the hand, and women a tearful look ; but from 


PAUL FABER. 


287 


their sympathy he derived no faintest pleasure, for he knew he 
deserved nothing that came from heart of tenderness. Not 
that he had begun to condemn himself for his hardness to 
the woman who, whatever her fault, yet honored him by 
confessing it, or to bemoan her hard fate to whom a man 
had not been a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from 
the tempest of life, a shadow-shelter from the scorching of 
her own sin. As he recovered from the double shock, and, 
his strength slowly returning, his work increased, bringing 
him again into the run of common life, his sense of desola- 
tion increased. As his head ached less, his heart ached the 
more, nor did the help he ministered to his fellows any 
longer return in comfort to himself. Hitherto his regard of 
annihilation had been as of something so distant, that its 
approach was relatively by degrees infinitesimal, but as the 
days went on, he began to derive a gray consolation from 
the thought that he must at length cease to exist. He would 
not hasten the end ; he would be brave, and see the play 
out. Only it was all so dull ! If a woman looked kindly at 
him, if for a moment it gave him pleasure, the next it was as 
an arrow in his heart. What a white splendor was vanished 
from his life ! Where were those great liquid orbs of radi- 
ating darkness ? — where was that smile with its flash of 
whiteness ? — that form so lithe, yet so stately, so perfect in 
modulation ? — where were those hands and feet that spoke 
without words, and took their own way with his heart ? — 

those arms ? His being shook to its center. One word 

of tenderness and forgiveness, and all would have been his 
own still ! — But on what terms ? — Of dishonor and false- 
hood, he said, and grew hard again. He was sorry for J uliet, 
but she and not he was to blame. She had ruined his life, 
as well as lost her own, and his was the harder case, for he 
had to live on, and she had taken with her all the good the 
earth had for him. She had been the sole object of his 
worship ; he had acknowledged no other divinity ; she was 
the loveliness of all things ; but she had dropped from her 
pedestal, and gone down in the sea that flows waveless and 
windless and silent around the worlds. Alas for life ! But 
he would bear on till its winter came. The years would be 
as tedious as hell ; but nothing that ends can be other than 
brief. Not willingly even yet would he fail of what work 
was his. The world was bad enough ; he would not leave 
it worse than he had found it. He would work life out, that 
he might die in peace. Fame truly there was none for him, 


288 


PAUL FABER. 


but his work would not be lost. The wretched race of men 
would suffer a little the less that he had lived. Poor com- 
fort, if more of health but ministered to the potency of such 
anguish as now burrowed in him like a mole of fire ! 

There had been a time when, in the young pathos of 
things, he would shut his eyes that the sunset might not 
wound him so sore : now, as he rode homeward into the 
fronting sunset, he felt nothing, cared for nothing, only ached 
with a dull aching through body and soul. He was still 
kind to his fellows, but the glow of the kindness had van- 
ished, and truest thanks hardly waked the slightest thrill. 

He very seldom saw Wingfold now, and less than ever 
was inclined toward his doctrine ; for had it not been 
through him this misery had come upon him ? Had he not, 
with the confidence of all the sciences, uttered the merest 
dreams as eternal truths? How could poor Juliet help 
supposing he knew the things he asserted, and taking 
them for facts ? The human heart was the one unreason- 
able thing, sighing ever after that which is not ! Sprung 
from nothing, it yet desired a creator ! — at least some 
hearts did so : his did not ; he knew better ! 

There was of course no reason in this. Was the thing 
not a fact which she had confessed ? was he not a wor- 
shiper of fact ? did he not even dignify it with the name of 
truth ? and could he wish his wife had kept the miserable 
fact to herself, leaving him to his fools’-paradise of igno- 
rance ? Why then should he feel resentment against the man 
whose teaching had only compelled her to confess it ? — But 
the thing was out of the realm of science and its logic. 

Sometimes he grew fierce, and determined to face every 
possible agony, endure all, and dominate his misery ; but 
ever and anon it returned with its own disabling sickness, 
bringing the sense of the unendurable. Of his own motion 
he saw nobody except in his practice. He studied hard, 
even to weariness and faintness, contrived strange experi- 
ments, and caught, he believed, curious peeps into the house 
of life. Upon them he founded theories as wild as they 
were daring, and hob-nobbed with death and corruption. 
But life is at the will of the Maker, and misery can not kill 
it. By degrees a little composure returned, and the old 
keen look began to revive. But there were wrinkles on the 
forehead that had hitherto been smooth as ivory ; furrows, 
the dry water-courses of sorrow, appeared on his cheeks, 
and a few silvery threads glinted in his hair. His step was 


PAUL FABER. 


289 

heavy, and his voice had lost its ring — the cheer was out of 
it. He no more obtruded his opinions, for, as I have said, 
he shrunk from all interchange, but he held to them as firmly 
as ever. He was not to be driven from the truth by suffer- 
ing ! But there was a certain strange movement in his 
spirit of which he took no note — a feeling of resentment, as 
if against a God that yet did not exist, for making upon 
him the experiment whether he might not, by oppression, be 
driven to believe in Him. 

When Dorothy knew of his return, and his ways began to 
show that he intended living just as before his marriage, 
the time seemed come for telling Juliet of the accident and 
his recovery from the effects of it. She went into violent 
hysterics, and the moment she could speak, blamed Dorothy 
bitterly for not having told her before. 

“ It is all your lying religion ! ” she said. 

“ Your behavior, Juliet,” answered Dorothy, putting on 
the matron, and speaking with authority, “ shows plainly 
how right I was. You were not to be trusted, and I knew it. 
Had I told you, you would have rushed to him, and been 
anything but welcome. He would not even have known 
you ; and you would have been two on the doctor’s hands. 
You would have made every thing public, and when your 
husband came to himself, would probably have been the 
death of him after all.” 

“ He may have begun to think more kindly of me by that 
time,” said Juliet, humbled a little. 

“ We must not act on may-haves^" answered Dorothy. 

“ You say he looks wretched now,” suggested Juliet. 

“ And well he may, after concussion of the brain, not to 
mention what preceded it,” said Dorothy. 

She had come to see that Juliet required very plain 
speaking. She had so long practiced the art of deceiving 
herself that she was skillful at it. Indeed, but for the fault 
she had committed, she would all her life long have been 
given to petting and pitying, justifying and approving of 
herself. One can not help sometimes feeling that the only 
chance for certain persons is to commit some fault sufficient 
to shame them out of the self-satisfaction in which they 
burrow. A fault, if only it be great and plain enough to 
exceed their powers of self-justification, may then be, of 
God’s mercy, not indeed an angel of light to draw them, but 
verily a goblin of darkness to terrify them out of themselves. 
For the powers of darkness are His servants also, though 


290 


PAUL FABER. 


incapable of knowing it : He who is first and last can, even 
of those that love the lie, make slaves of the truth. And 
they who will not be sons shall be slaves, let them rant and 
wear crowns as they please in the slaves’ quarters. 

“ You must not expect him to get over such a shock all at 
once,” said Dorothy. “ — It may be,” she continued, “ that 
you were wrong in running away from him. I do not pre- 
tend to judge between you, but, perhaps, after the injury 
you had done him, you ought to have left it with him to say 
what you were to do next. By taking it in your own hands, 
you may have only added to the wrong.” 

“ And who helped me ? ” returned Juliet, in a tone of deep 
reproach. 

“ Helped you to run from him, Juliet ! — Really, if you 
were in the habit of behaving to your husband as you do to 

me ! ” She checked herself, and resumed calmly — 

‘‘ You forget the facts of the case, my dear. So far from 
helping you to run from him, I stopped you from running so 
far that neither could he find you, nor you return to him 
again. But now we must make the best of it by waiting. 
We must find out whether he wants you again, or your ab- 
sence is a relief to him. If I had been a man, I should have 
been just as wild as he.” 

She had seen in Juliet some signs that self-abhorrence 
was wanting, and self-pity reviving, and she would connive 
at no unreality in her treatment of herself. She was one 
thing when bowed to the earth in misery and shame, 
and quite another if thinking herself hardly used on all 
sides. 

It was a strange position for a young woman to be in — 
that of watcher over the marriage relations of two persons, 
to neither of whom she could be a friend otherwise than 
ab extra. Ere long she began almost to despair. Day after 
day she heard or saw that Faber continued sunk in himself, 
and how things were going there she could not tell. Was he 
thinking about the wife he had lost, or brooding over the 
wrong she had done him ? There was the question — and 
who was to answer it ? At the same time she was all but 
certain, that, things being as they were, any reconciliation 
that might be effected would owe itself merely to the raising, 
as it were of the dead, and the root of bitterness would soon 
trouble them afresh. If but one of them had begun the task 
of self-conquest, there would be hope for both. But of such 
a change there was in Juliet as yet no sign. 


PAUL FABER. 


291 

Dorothy then understood her position — it was wonderful 
with what clearness, but solitary necessity is a hot sun to 
ripen. What was she to do ? To what quarter — could she 
to any quarter look for help ? Naturally she thought first 
of Mr. Wingfold. But she did not feel at all sure that he 
would consent to receive a communication upon any other 
understanding than that he was to act in the matter as he 
might see best ; and would it be right to acquaint him with 
the secret of another when possibly he might feel bound to 
reveal it ? Besides, if he kept it hid, the result might be 
blame to him ; and blame, she reasoned, although a small 
matter in regard to one like herself, might in respect of a 
man in the curate’s position involve serious consequences. 
While she thus reflected, it came into her mind with what 
enthusiasm she had heard him speak of Mr. Polwarth, 
attributing to him the beginnings of all enlightenment he 
had himself ever received. Without this testimony, she 
would not have once thought of him. Indeed she had been 
more than a little doubtful of him, for she had never felt 
attracted to him, and from her knowledge of the unhealthy 
religious atmosphere of the chapel, had got unreasonably 
suspicious of cant. She had not had experience enough to dis- 
tinguish with any certainty the speech that comes from the 
head and that which comes out of the fullness of the heart. 
A man must talk out of that which is in him ; his well must 
give out the water of its own spring ; but what seems a well 
may be only a cistern, and the water by no means living 
water. What she had once or twice heard him say, had 
rather repelled than drawn her ; but Dorothy had. faith, and 
Mr. Wingfold had spoken. Might she tell him ? Ought 
she not to seek his help ? Would he keep the secret ? 
Could he help if he would ? Was he indeed as wise as 
they said ? 

In the meantime, little as she thought it, Polwarth had 
been awaiting a communication from her ; but when he 
found that the question whose presence was so visible in her 
whole bearing, neither died nor bore fruit, he began to think 
whether he might not help her to speak. The next time, 
therefore, that he opened the gate to her, he held in his 
hand a little bud he had just broken from a monthly rose. 
It was a hard little button, upon which the green leaves of 
its calyx clung as if choking it. 

“ What is the matter with this bud, do you think, Miss 
Drake ? ” he asked. 


292 


PAUL FABER. 


That you have plucked it,” she answered sharply, throw- 
ing a suspicious glance in his face. 

“ No ; that can not be it,” he answered with a quiet 
smile of intelligence. “ It has been just as you see it for 
the last three days. I only plucked it the moment I saw you 
coming.” 

“ Then the frost has caught it.” 

“ The frost /las caught it,” he answered ; “ but I am not 
quite sure whether the cause of its death was not rather its 
own life than the frost.” 

I don’t see what you mean by that, Mr. Polwarth,''’ said 
Dorothy, doubtfully, and with a feeling of discomfort. 

“ I admit it sounds paradoxical,” returned the little man. 
“ What I mean is, that the struggle of the life in it 
to unfold itself, rather than any thing else, was the cause of 
its death.” 

“ But the frost was the cause of its not being able to un- 
fold itself,” said Dorothy. 

“ That I admit,” said Polwarth ; “ and perhaps a weaker 
life in the flower would have yielded sooner. I may have 
carried too far an analogy I was seeking to e.stablish between 
it and the human heart, in which repression is so much more 
dangerous than mere oppression. Many a heart has withered 
like my poor little bud, because it did not know its friend 
when it saw him.” 

Dorothy was frightened. He knew something ! Or did 
he only suspect ? Perhaps he was merely guessing at her 
religious troubles, wanting to help her. She must answer 
carefully. 

“ I have no doubt you are right, Mr. Polwarth,” she said ; 
but there are some things it is not wise, and other things 
it would not be right to speak about.” 

“ Quite true,” he answered. “ I did not think it wise to 
say any thing sooner, but now I venture to ask how the poor 
lady does ? ” 

“ What lady ? ” returned Dorothy, dreadfully startled, and 
turning white. 

“ Mrs. Faber,” answered Polwarth, with the utmost calm- 
ness. “ Is she not still at the Old House ? ” 

“ Is it known, then ? ” faltered Dorothy. 

“To nobody but myself, so far as I am aware,” replied 
the gatekeeper. 

“ And how long have you known it ? ” 

^ “From the very day of her disappearance, I may say.” 


PAUL FABER. 


293 


“ Why didn’t you let me know sooner ? ” said Dorothy, 
feeling aggrieved, though she would have found it hard to 
show wherein lay the injury. 

“ For more reasons than one,” answered Polwarth ; “ but 
one will be enough : you did not trust me. It was well 
therefore to let you understand I could keep a secret. I 
let you know now only because I see you are troubled 
about her. I fear you have not got her to take any comfort, 
poor lady ! ” 

Dorothy stood silent, gazing down with big, frightened 
eyes at the strange creature who looked steadfastly up at 
her from under what seemed a huge hat — for his head was 
as large as that of a tall man. He seemed to be reading her 
very thoughts. 

“ I can trust you. Miss Drake,” he resumed. “ If I did 
not, I should have at once acquainted the authorities with 
my suspicions ; for, you will observe, you are hiding from a 
community a fact which it has a right to know. But I have 
faith enough in you to believe that you are only waiting a 
fit time, and have good reasons for what you do. If I can 
give you any help, I am at your service.” 

He took off his big hat, and turned away into the house. 

Dorothy stood fixed for a moment or two longer, then 
walked slowly away, with her eyes on the ground. Before 
she reached the Old House, she had made up her mind to 
tell Polwarth as much as she could without betraying Juliet’s 
secret, and to ask him to talk to her, for which she would 
contrive an opportunity. 

For some time she had been growing more anxious every 
day. No sign of change showed in any quarter ; no way 
opened through the difficulties that surrounded them, while 
these were greatly added to by the likelihood appearing that 
another life was on its way into them. What was to be 
done ? How was she in her ignorance so to guard the 
hopeless wife that motherhood might do something to con- 
sole her ? She had two lives upon her hands, and did indeed 
want counsel. The man who knew their secret already — 
the minor prophet, she had heard the curate call him — 
might at least help her to the next step she must take. 

Juliet’s mental condition was not at all encouraging. She 
was often ailing and peevish, behaving as if she owed 
Dorothy grudge instead of gratitude. And indeed to her- 
self Dorothy would remark that if nothing more came out 
of it than seemed likely now, Juliet would be under no very 


294 


PAUL FABER. 


ponderous obligation to her. She found it more and more 
difficult to interest her in any thing. After Othello she did 
not read another play. Nothing pleased her but to talk 
about her husband. If Dorothy had seen him, Juliet had 
endless questions to put to her about him ; and when she 
had answered as many of them as she could, she would put 
them all over again afresh. On one occasion when Dorothy 
could not say she believed he was, when she saw him, think- 
ing about his wife, Juliet went into hysterics. She was 
growing so unmanageable that if Dorothy had not partially 
opened her mind to Polwarth, she must at last have been 
compelled to give her up. The charge was wearing her out ; 
her strength was giving way, and her temper growing so 
irritable that she was ashamed of herself — and all without 
any good to Juliet. Twice she hinted at letting her husband 
know where she was, but Juliet, although, on both occasions, 
she had a moment before been talking as if Dorothy alone 
prevented her from returning to him, fell on her knees in 
wild distress, and entreated her to bear with her. At the 
smallest approach of the idea toward actuality, the recollec- 
tion rushed scorching back — of how she had implored him, 
how she had humbled herself soul and body before him, how 
he had turned from her with loathing, would not put forth 
a hand to lift her from destruction and to restore her to 
peace, had left her naked on the floor, nor once returned “ to 
ask the spotted princess how she fares ” — and she shrunk 
with agony from any real thought of again supplicating his 
mercy. 

Presently another difficulty began to show in the near dis- 
tance : Mr. Drake, having made up his mind as to the alter- 
ations he would have effected, had begun to think there was 
no occasion to put off till the spring, and talked of com- 
mencing work in the house at no distant day. Dorothy 
therefore proposed to Juliet that, as it was impossible to con- 
ceal her there much longer, she should go to some distant 
part of the country, where she would contrive to follow her. 
But the thought of moving further from her husband, whose 
nearness, though she dared not seek him, seemed her only 
safety, was frightful to Juliet. The wasting anxiety she 
caused Dorothy d:4 not occur to her. Sorrow is not selfish, 
but many persons are in sorrow entirely selfish. It makes 
them so important in their own eyes, that they seem to have 
a claim upon all that people can do for them. 

To the extent therefore, of what she might herself have 


PAUL FABER. 


295 


known without Juliet’s confession, Dorothy, driven to her 
wits’ end, resolved to open the matter to the gatekeeper ; 
and accordingly, one evening on her way home, called at 
the lodge, and told Polwarth where and in what condition 
she had found Mrs. Faber, and what she had done with her ; 
that she did not think it the part of a friend to advise her 
return to her husband at present ; that she would not her- 
self hear of returning ; that she had no comfort, and her 
life was a burden to her ; and that she could not possibly 
keep her concealed much longer, and did not know what 
next to do. 

Polwarth answered only that he must make the acquaint- 
ance of Mrs. Faber, If that could be effected, he believed 
he should be able to help them out of their difficulties. 
Between them, therefore, they must arrange a plan for his 
meeting her. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

THE OLD GARDEN. 

The next morning, Juliet, walking listlessly up and down 
the garden, turned the corner of a yew hedge, and came 
suddenly upon a figure that might well have appeared one 
of the kobolds of German legend. He was digging slowly 
but steadily, crooning a strange song — so low that, until she 
saw him she did not hear him. 

She started back in dismay. The kobold neither raised 
his head nor showed other sign than the ceasing of his song 
that he was aware of her presence. Slowly and steadily he 
went on with his work. He was trenching the ground deep, 
still throwing the earth from the bottom to the top. Juliet, 
concluding he was deaf, and the ceasing of his song acci- 
dental, turned softly, and would have retreated. But Pol- 
warth, so far from being deaf, heard better than most 
people. His senses, indeed, had been sharpened by his in- 
firmities — all but those of taste and smell, which were fitful, 
now dull and now exquisitely keen. At the first move- 
ment breaking the stillness into which consternation had 
cast her, he spoke. 


296 


PAUL FABER. 


‘‘ Can you guess what I am doing, Mrs. Faber ? ” he said, 
throwing up a spadeful and a glance together, like a man 
who could spare no time from his work. 

Juliet’s heart got in the way, and she could not answer 
him. She felt much as a ghost, wandering through a house, 
might feel, if suddenly addressed by the name she had 
borne in the old days, while yet she was clothed in the gar- 
ments of the flesh. Could it be that this man led such a 
retired life that, although living so near Glaston, and see- 
ing so many at his gate, he had yet never heard that she 
Nad passed from the ken of the living ? Or could it be that 
Dorothy had betrayed her ? She stood quaking. The situ- 
ation was strange. Before her was a man who did not seem 
to know that what he knew concerning her was a secret 
from all the world besides ! And with that she had a sud- 
den insight into the consequence of the fact of her existence 
coming to her husband’s knowledge : would it not add to 
his contempt and scorn to know that she was not even 
dead ? Would he not at once conclude that she had been 
contriving to work on his feelings,'that she had been specu- 
lating on his repentance, counting upon and awaiting such 
a return of his old fondness, as would make him forget all 
her faults, and prepare him to receive her again with de- 
light ? — But she must answer the creature ! Ill could she 
afford to offend him ! But what was she to say ? She had 
utterly forgotten what he had said to her. She stood star- 
ing at him, unable to speak. It was but for a few moments, 
but they were long as minutes. And as she gazed, it seemed 
as if the strange being in the trench had dug his way up 
from the lower parts of the earth, bringing her secret with 
him, and come to ask her questions. Wdiat an earthy yet 
unearthly look he had ! Almost for the moment she 
believed the ancient rumors of other races than those of 
mankind, that shared the earth with them, but led such 
differently conditioned lives, that, in the course of ages, 
only a scanty few of the unblending natures crossed each 
other’s path, to stand astare in mutual astonishment. 

Polwarth went on digging, nor once looked up. After a 
little while he resumed, in the most natural way, speaking 
as if he had known her well : 

“ Mr. Drake and I were talking, some weeks ago, about 
a certain curious little old-fashioned flower in my garden at 
the back of the lodge. He asked me if I could spare him a 
root of it. I told him I could spare him any thing he would 


PAUL FABER. 


297 


like to have, but that I would gladly give him every flower 
in my garden, roots and all, if he would but let me dig three 
yards square in his garden at the Old House, and have all 
that came up of itself for a year.” 

He paused again. Juliet neither spoke nor moved. He 
dug rather feebly for a gnome, with panting, asthmatic 
breath. 

“ Perhaps you are not aware, ma’am,” he began again, 
and ceasing his labor stood up leaning on the spade, which 
was nearly as high as himself, that many of the seeds 
which fall upon the ground do not grow, yet, strange to tell, 
retain the power of growth. I suspect myself, but have not 
had opportunity of testing the conjecture, that such fall in 
their pods, or shells, and that before these are sufficiently 
decayed to allow the sun and moisture and air to reach 
them, they have got covered up in the soil too deep for 
those same influences. They say fishes a long time bedded 
in ice will come to life again : I can not tell about that, but 
it is well enough known that if you dig deep in any old 
garden, such as this, ancient, perhaps forgotten flowers, 
will appear. The fashion has changed, they have been 
neglected or uprooted, but all the time their life is hid below. 
And the older they are, the nearer perhaps to their primary 
idea ! ” 

By this time she was far more composed, though not yet 
had she made up her mind what to say, or how to .treat the 
dilemma in which she found herself. 

After a brief pause therefore, he resumed again : 

“ I don’t fancy,” he said, with a low, asthmatic laugh, 
** that we shall have many forgotten weeds come up. They 
all, I suspect, keep pretty well in the sun. But just think 
how the fierce digging of the crisis to which the great 
Husbandman every now and then leads a nation, brings 
back to the surface its old forgotten flowers. What virtues, 
for instance, the Revolution brought to light as even yet in 
the nature of the corrupted nobility of France ! ” 

“ What a peculiar goblin it is!” thought Juliet, begin- 
ning to forget herself a little in watching and listening to 
the strange creature. She had often seen him before, but 
had always turned from him with a kind of sympathetic 
shame : of course the poor creature could not bear to be 
looked at ; he must know himself improper ! 

“ I have sometimes wondered,” Polwarth yet again re- 
sumed, whether the troubles without end that some people 


298 


PAUL FABER. 


seem born to — I do not mean those they bring upon them- 
selves — may not be as subsoil plows, tearing deep into the 
family mold, that the seeds of the lost virtues of their race 
may in them be once more brought within reach of sun and 
air and dew. It would be a pleasant, hopeful thought if one 
might hold it. Would it not, ma’am ? ” 

“It would indeed,” answered Juliet with a sigh, which 
rose from an undefined feeling that if some hidden virtue 
would come up in her, it would be welcome. How many 
people would like to be good, if only they might be good 
without taking trouble about it ! They do not like goodness 
well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that 
they have that they may buy it ; they will not batter at the 
gate of the kingdom of Heaven; but they look with pleasure 
on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it 
would be rather nice to live in it ! They do not know that 
it is goodness all the time their very being is pining after, 
and that they are starving their nature of its necessary food. 
Then Polwarth’s idea turned itself round in Juliet’s mind, 
and grew clearer, but assumed reference to weeds only, and 
not flowers. She thought how that fault of hers had, like the 
seed of a poison-plant, been buried for years, unknown to 
one alive, and forgotten almost by herself — so diligently for- 
gotten indeed, that it seemed to have gradually slipped 
away over the horizon of her existence ; and now here it 
was at the surface again in all its horror and old reality ! nor 
that merely, for already it had blossomed and borne its 
rightful fruit of dismay — an evil pod, filled with a sickening 
juice, and swarming with gray flies. — But she must speak, 
and, if possible, prevent the odd creature from going and 
publishing in Glaston that he had seen Mrs. Faber, and she 
was at the Old House. 

“ How did you know I was here ? ” she asked abruptly. 

“ How do you know that I knew, ma’am ? ” returned 
Polwarth, in a tone which took from the words all appearance 
of rudeness. 

“You were not in the least surprised to see me,” she 
answered. 

“ A man,” returned the dwarf, “ who keeps his eyes open 
may almost cease to be surprised at any thing. In my time 
I have seen so much that is wonderful — in fact every thing 
seems to me so wonderful that I hardly expect to be sur- 
prised any more.” 

He said this, desiring to provoke conversation. But 


PAUL FABER. 


299 

Juliet took the answer for an evasive one, and it strength- 
ened her suspicion of Dorothy. She was getting tired of 
her ! Then there was only one thing left ! — The minor 
prophet had betaken himself again to his work, delving 
deeper, and throwing slow spadeful after spadeful to the 
surface. 

“ Miss Drake told you I was here ! ” said Juliet. 

“ No, indeed, Mrs. Faber. No one told me,” answered 
Polwarth. “ I learned it for myself. I could hardly help 
finding it out.” 

“ Then — then — does every body know it ? ” she faltered, 
her heart sinking within her at the thought. 

“ Indeed, ma’am, so far as I know, not a single person 
is aware you are alive except Miss Drake and myself. I 
have not even told my niece who lives with me, and who 
can keep a secret as well as myself.” 

Juliet breathed a great sigh of relief. 

“ Will you tell me why you have kept it so secret ? ” she 
asked. 

“ Because it was your secret, ma’am, not mine.” 

“ But you were under no obligation to keep my secret.” 

“ How do you justify such a frightful statement as that, 
ma’am ? ” 

“ Why, what could it matter to you ? ” 

“ Every thing.” 

“ I do not understand. You have no interest in me. 
You could have no inducement.” 

“ On the contrary, I had the strongest inducement : I 
saw that an opportunity might come of serving you.” 

“ But that is just the unintelligible thing to me. There 
is no reason why you should wish to serve me ! ” said 
Juliet, thinking to get at the bottom of some design. 

“ There you mistake, ma’am. I am under the most abso- 
lute and imperative obligation to serve you — the greatest 
under which any being can find himself.” 

“ What a ridiculous, crooked little monster ! ” said 
Juliet to herself. But she began the same moment to think 
whether she might not turn the creature’s devotion to good 
account. She might at all events insure his silence. 

“ Would you be kind enough to explain yourself ? ” she 
said, now also interested in the continuance of the conver- 
sation. 

“ I would at once,” replied Polwarth, “ had I sufficient 
ground for hoping you would understand my explanation.’' 


300 


PAUL FABER. 


do not know that I am particularly stupid,” she 
returned, with a wan smile. 

“ I have heard to the contrary,” said Polwarth. “ Yet I 
can not help greatly doubting whether you will understand 
what I am now going to tell you. For I will tell you — on 
the chance : I have no secrets — that is, of my own. — I am 
one of those, Mrs. Faber,” he went on after a moment’s 
pause, but his voice neither became more solemn in tone, 
nor did he cease his digging, although it got slower, “ who, 
against the non-evidence of their senses, believe there is a 
Master of men, the one Master, a right perfect Man, who 
demands of them, and lets them know in themselves the 
rectitude of the demand that they also shall be right and 
true men, that is, true brothers to their brothers and sisters 
of mankind. It is recorded too, and I believe it, that this 
Master said that any service rendered to one of His people 
was rendered to Flimself. Therefore, for love of His will, 
even if I had no sympathy with you, Mrs. Faber, I should 
feel bound to help you. As you can not believe me interested 
in yourself, I must tell you that to betray your secret for 
the satisfaction of a love of gossip, would be to sin against 
my highest joy, against my own hope, against the heart of 
God, from which your being and mine draws the life of its 
every moment.” 

Juliet’s heart seemed to turn sick at the thought of such a 
creature claiming brotherhood with her. That it gave 
ground for such a claim, seemed for the moment an irre- 
sistible argument against the existence of a God. 

In her countenance Polwarth read at once that he had 
blundered, and a sad, noble, humble smile irradiated his. 
It had its effect on Juliet. She would be generous and 
forgive his presumption : she knew dwarfs were always 
conceited — that wise Nature had provided them with high 
thoughts wherewith to add the missing cubit to their stature. 
What repulsive things Christianity taught ! Her very flesh 
recoiled from the poor ape ! 

“ I trust you are satisfied, ma’am,” the kobold added, 
after a moment’s vain expectation of a word from Juliet, 

“ that your secret is safe with me.” 

“ I am,” answered Juliet, with a condescending motion 
of her stately neck, saying to herself in feeling if not in 
conscious thought, — “ After all he is hardly human ! I may 
accept his devotion as I would that of a dog ! ” 

The moment she had thus far yielded, she began to long 


PAUL FABER. 


301 

to speak of her husband. Perhaps he can tell her some- 
thing of him ! At least he could talk about him. She would 
have been eager to look on his reflection, had it been possi- 
ble, in the mind of a dog that loved him. She would turn 
the conversation in a direction that might find him. 

But I do not see,” she went on, “ how you, Mr. Pol- 
warth — I think that is your name — how you can, consist- 
ently with your principles, ” 

“ Excuse me, ma’am : I can not even, by silence, seem to 
admit that you know any thing whatever of my principles.” 

“ Oh ! ” she returned, with a smile of generous confes- 
sion, “ I was brought up to believe as you do.” 

“ That but satisfies me that for the present you are incapa- 
ble of knowing any thing of my principles.” 

“ I do not wonder at your thinking so,” she returned, with 
the condescension of superior education, as she supposed, 
and yet with the first motion of an unconscious respect for 
the odd little monster.— He, with wheezing chest, went on 
throwing up the deep, damp, fresh earth, to him smelling of 
marvelous things. Ruth would have ached all over to see 
him working so hard ! — “ Still,” Juliet went on, “ supposing 
your judgment of me correct, that only makes it the stranger 
you should imagine that in serving such a one, you are 
pleasing Him you call your Master. He says whosoever de- 
nies Him before men He will deny before the angels of God.” 

“ What my Lord says He will do. He will do, as He meant 
it when He said it : what He tells me to do, I try to under- 
stand and do. Now He has told me of all things not to say 
that good comes of evil. He condemned that in the Phari- 
sees as the greatest of crimes. When, therefore, I see a man 
like your husband, helping his neighbors near and far, 
being kind, indeed loving, and good-hearted to all men,” — 
Here a great sigh, checked and broken into many little 
ones, came in a tremulous chain from the bosom of the wife 
— “ I am bound to say that man is not scattering his Master 
abroad. He is indeed opposing Him in words : he speaks 
against the Son of Man ; but that the Son of Man Himself 
says shall be forgiven him. If I mistal^e in this, to my own 
Master I stand or fall.” 

“ How can He be his Master if he does not acknowledge 
Him?” 

“ Becau.se the very tongue with which he denies Him is 
yet His. I am the master of the flowers that will now grow 
by my labor, though not one of them will know me — how 


302 


PAUL FABER. 


much more must He be the Master of the men He has called 
into being, though they do not acknowledge Him ! If the 
story of the gospel be a true one, as with my heart and soul 
and all that is in me I believe it is, then Jesus of Nazareth 
is Lord and Master of Mr. Faber, and for him not to acknowl- 
edge it is to fall from the summit of his being. To deny 
one’s Master, is to be a slave.” 

“You are very polite!” said Mrs. Faber, and turned 
away. She recalled her imaginary danger, however, and turn- 
ing again, said, “ But though I differ from you in opinion, 
Mr. Polwarth, I quite recognize you as no common man, and 
put you upon your honor with regard to my secret,” 

“ Had you entrusted me with your secret, ma’am, the 
phrase would have had more significance. But, obeying my 
Master, I do not require to think of my own honor. Those 
who do not acknowledge their Master, can not afford to for- 
get it. But if they do not learn to obey Him, they will find 
by the time they have got through what they call life, they 
have left themselves little honor to boast of.” 

“ He has guessed my real secret ! ” thought poor Juliet, 
and turning away in confusion, without a word of farewell, 
went straight into the house. But before Dorothy, who had 
been on the watch at the top of the slope, came in, she had 
begun to hope that the words of the forward, disagreeable, 
conceited dwarf had in them nothing beyond a general 
remark. 

When Dorothy entered, she instantly accused her of 
treachery. Dorothy, repressing her indignation, begged she 
would go with her to Polwarth. But when they reached the 
spot, the gnome had vanished. 

He had been digging only for the sake of the flowers 
buried in Juliet, and had gone home to lie down. His 
bodily strength was exhausted, but will and faith and pur- 
pose never forsook the soul cramped up in that distorted 
frame. When greatly suffering, he would yet suffer with his 
will — not merely resigning himself to the will of God, but 
desiring the suffering that God willed. When the wearied 
soul could no longer keep the summit of the task, when not 
strength merely, but the consciousness of faith and duty 
failed him, he would cast faith and strength and duty, all his 
being, into the gulf of the Father’s will, and simply suffer, 
no longer trying to feel any thing — waiting only until the 
Life should send him light. 

Dorothy turned to Juliet. 


PAUL FABER. 303 

“ You might have asked Mr. Polwarth, Juliet, whether I 
had betrayed you,” she said. 

“Now I think of it, he did say you had not told him. But 
how was I to take the word of a creature like that ? ” 

“ Juliet,” said Dorothy, very angry, “ I begin to doubt if 
you were worth taking the trouble for ! ” 

She turned from her, and walked toward the house. 
Juliet rushed after her and caught her in her arms. 

“ Forgive me, Dorothy,” she cried. “ I am not in my 
right senses, I do believe. What is to be done now this — 
man knows it ? ” 

“ Things are no worse than they were,” said Dorothy, as 
quickly appeased as angered. “ On the contrary, I believe we 
have the only one to help us who is able to do it. Why, 
Juliet, why what am I to do with you when my father sends 
the carpenters and bricklayers to the house ? They will be 
into every corner ! He talks of commencing next week, and 
I am at my wits’ end.” 

“ Oh ! don’t forsake me, Dorothy, after all you have done 
for me,” ci;ied Juliet. “ If you turn me out, there never was 
creature in the world so forlorn as I shall be — absolutely 
helpless, Dorothy ! ” 

“ I will do all I can for you, my poor Juliet ; but if Mr. 
Polwarth do not think of some way, I don’t know what will 
become of us. You don’t know what you are guilty of in 
despising him. Mr. Wingfold speaks of him as far the first 
man in Glaston.” 

Certainly Mr. Wingfold, Mr. Drew, and some others of 
the best men in the place, did think him, of those they knew, 
the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. Glaston was alto- 
gether of a different opinion. Which was the right opinion, 
must be left to the measuring rod that shall finally be 
applied to the statures of men. 

The history of the kingdom of Heaven — need I say I mean 
a very different thing from what is called church-histcfy ? — 
is the only history that will ever be able to show itself a his- 
tory — that can ever come to be thoroughly written, or to be 
read with a clear understanding ; for it alone will prove able 
to explain itself, while in doing so it will explain all other 
attempted histories as well. Many of those who will then 
be found first in the eternal record, may have been of little 
regard in the eyes of even their religious contemporaries, 
may have been absolutely unknown to generations that came 
after, and were yet the men of life and potency, working as 


304 


PAUL FABER. 


light, as salt, as leaven, in the world. When the real worth 
of things is, over all, the measure of their estimation, then 
is the kingdom of our God and His Christ. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

THE POTTERY. 

It had been a very dry autumn, and the periodical rains 
had been long delayed, so that the minister had been able 
to do much for the houses he had bought, called the Pottery. 
There had been but just rain enough to reveal the advant- 
age of the wall he had built to compel the water to keep 
the wider street. Thoroughly dry and healthy it was impos- 
sible to make them, at least in the time ; but it is one thing 
to have the water all about the place you stand on, and 
another to be up to the knees in it. Not at that point only, 
however, but at every spot where the water could enter 
freely, he had done what he could provisionally for the 
defense of his poor colony — for alas ! how much among the 
well-to-do, in town or city, are the poor like colonists only ! 
— and he had great hopes of the result. Stone and brick 
and cement he had used freely, and one or two of the people 
about began to have a glimmering idea of the use of money 
after a gospel fashion — that is, for thorough work where and 
because it was needed. The curate was full of admiration 
and sympathy. But the whole thing gave great dissatisfac- 
tion to others not a few. For, as the currents of inundation 
would be somewhat altered in direction and increased in 
force by his obstructions, it became necessary for several 
others also to add to the defenses of their property, and this 
of course was felt to be a grievance. Their personal incon- 
veniences were like the shilling that hides the moon, and, 
in the resentment they occasioned, blinded their hearts to 
the seriousness of the evils from which their merely tem- 
porary annoyance was the deliverance of their neighbors. 
A fancy of prescriptive right in their own comforts out- 
weighed all the long and heavy sufferings of the others. 
Why should not their neighbors continue miserable, when 
they had been miserable all their lives hitherto ? Those who, 


PAUL FABER. 


305 


on the contrary, had been comfortable all their lives, and 
liked it so much, ought to continue comfortable — even at 
their expense. Why not let well alone ? Or if people 
would be so unreasonable as to want to be comfortable too, 
when nobody cared a straw about them, let them make 
themselves comfortable without annoying those superior 
beings who had been comfortable all the time ! — Persons 
who, consciously or unconsciously, reason thus, would do 
well to read with a little attention the parable of the rich 
man and Lazarus, wherein it seems recognized that a man’s 
having been used to a thing may be just the reason, not for 
the continuance, but for the alteration of his condition. In the 
present case the person who most found himself aggrieved, 
was the dishonest butcher. A piece of brick wall which the 
minister had built in contact with the wall of his yard, would 
indubitably cause such a rise in the water at the descent into 
the area of his cellar, that, in order to its protection in a 
moderate flood — in a great one the cellar was always filled — 
the addition to its defense of two or three more rows of 
bricks would be required, carrying a correspondent diminu- 
tion of air and light. It is one of the punishments overtak- 
ing those who wrong their neighbors, that not only do they 
feel more keenly than others any injury done to themselves, 
but they take many things for injuries that do not belong to 
the category. It was but a matter of a few shillings at the 
most, but the man who did not scruple to charge the less 
careful of his customers for undelivered ounces, gathering 
to pounds and pounds of meat, resented bitterly the necessity 
of the outlay. He knew, or ought to have known, that he 
had but to acquaint the minister with the fact, to have the 
thing set right at once ; but the minister had found him out, 
and he therefore much preferred the possession of his griev- 
ance to its removal. To his friends he regretted that a 
minister of the gospel should be so corrupted by the mam- 
mon of unrighteousness as to use it against members of his 
own church : that, he said, was not the way to make friends 
with it. But on the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided 
showing Mr. Drake any sign of his resentment ; for the face 
of his neighbors shames a man whose heart condemns him 
but shames him not. He restricted himself to grumbling, 
and brooded to counterplot the mischiefs of the minister. 
What right had he to injure him for the sake of the poor ? 
Was it not written in the Bible : Thou shalt not favor the 
poor man in his cause ? Was it not written also : For every 


3o6 


PAUL FABER. 


man shall hear his own burden ? That was common sense ! 
He did his share in supporting the poor that were church- 
pembers, but was he to suffer for improvements on Drake’s 
property for the sake of a pack of roughs ! Let him be 
charitable at his own cost ! etc., etc. Self is prolific in argu- 
ment. 

It suited Mr. Drake well, notwithstanding his church 
republican theories, against which, in the abstract, I could 
ill object, seeing the whole current of Bible teaching is 
toward the God-inspired ideal commonwealth — it suited a 
man like Mr. Drake well, I say, to be an autocrat, and was 
a most happy thing for his tenants, for certainly no other 
system of government than a wise autocracy will serve in 
regard to the dwellings of the poor. And already, I repeat, 
he had effected not a little. Several new cottages had 
been built, and one incorrigible old one pulled down. But 
it had dawned upon him that, however desirable it might be 
on a dry hill-side, on such a foundation as this a cottage was 
the worst form of human dwelling that could be built. For 
when the whole soil was in time of rain like a full sponge, 
every room upon it was little better than a hollow in a cloud, 
and the right thing must be to reduce contact with the soil 
as much as possible. One high house, therefore, with many 
stories, and stone feet to stand upon, must be the proper 
kind of building for such a situation. He must lift the first 
house from the water, and set as many more houses as con- 
venient upon it. 

He had therefore already so far prepared for the building 
of such a house as should lift a good many families far above 
all deluge ; that is, he had dug the foundation, and deep, 
to get at the more solid ground. In this he had been pre- 
cipitate, as not unfrequently in his life ; for while he was 
yet meditating whether he should not lay the foundation 
altogether solid, of the unporous stone of the neighborhood, 
the rains began, and there was the great hole, to stand all 
the winter full of water, in the middle of the cottages ! 

The weather cleared again, but after a St. Martin’s 
summer unusually prolonged, the rain came down in terrible 
earnest. Day after day, the clouds condensed, grew water, 
and poured like a squeezed sponge. A wet November 
indeed it was — wet overhead — wet underfoot — wet all 
round ! and the rivers rose rapidly. 

When the Lythe rose beyond a certain point, it overflowed 
into a hollow, hardly a valley, and thereby a portion of it 


PAUL FABER. 


307 

descended almost straight to Glaston. Hence it came that 
in a flood the town was invaded both by the rise of the river 
from below, and by this current from above, on its way to 
rejoin the main body of it, and the streets were soon turned 
into canals. The currents of the slowly swelling river and 
of its temporary branch then met in Pine street, and formed 
not a very rapid, but a heavy run at ebb tide ; for Glaston, 
though at some distance from the mouth of the river, meas- 
uring by its course, was not far from the sea, which was 
visible across the green flats, a silvery line on the horizon. 
Landward, beyond the flats, high ground rose on all sides, 
and hence it was that the floods came down so deep upon 
Glaston. 

On a certain Saturday it rained all the morning heavily, 
but toward the afternoon cleared a little, so that many 
hoped the climax had been reached, while the more expe- 
rienced looked for worse. After sunset the clouds gathered 
thicker than before, and the rain of the day was as nothing 
to the torrent descending with a steady clash all night. 
When the slow, dull morning came Glaston stood in the 
middle of a brown lake, into which water was rushing from 
the sky in straight, continuous lines. The prospect was dis- 
composing. Some, too confident in the apparent change, 
had omitted needful precautions, in most parts none were 
now possible, and in many more none would have been of 
use. Most cellars were full, and the water was rising on the 
ground-floors. It was a very different affair from a flood in 
a mountainous country, but serious enough, though without 
immediate danger to life. Many a person that morning 
stepped out of bed up to the knee in muddy water. 

With the first of the dawn the curate stood peering from 
the window of his dressing-room, through the water that 
coursed down the pane, to discover the state of the country ; 
for the window looked inland from the skirt of the town. 
All was gray mist, brown water, and sheeting rain. 1 he 
only things clear were that not a soul would be at church 
that morning, and that, though he could do nothing to 
divide them the bread needful for their souls, he might do 
something for some of their bodies. It was a happy thing 
it was Sunday, for, having laid in their stock of bread the 
day before, people were not so dependent on the bakers, 
half whose ovens must now be full of water. But most of 
the kitchens must be flooded, he reasoned, the fire-wood 
soaking, and the coal in some cellars inaccessible. The 


3o8 


PAUL FABER. 


very lucifer-matches in many houses would be as useless as 
the tinderbox of a shipwrecked sailor. And if the rain 
were to cease at once the water would yet keep rising for 
many hours. He turned from the window, took his bath in 
homoeopathic preparation, and then went to wake his wife. 

She was one of those blessed women who always open 
their eyes smiling. She owed very little of her power of 
sympathy to personal suffering ; the perfection of her 
health might have made one who was too anxious for her 
spiritual growth even a little regretful. Her husband there- 
fore had seldom to think of sparing her when any thing had 
to be done. She could lose a night’s sleep without the 
smallest injury, and stand fatigue better than most men ; 
and in the requirements of the present necessity there 
would be mingled a large element of adventure, almost of 
frolic, full of delight to a vigorous organization. 

“ What a good time of it the angels of wind and flame 
must have ! ” said the curate to himself as he went to wake 
her. “ What a delight to be embodied as a wind, or a flame, 
or a rushing sea ! — Come, Helen, my help ! Glaston wants 
you,” he said softly in her ear. 

She started up. 

“What is it, Thomas?” she said, holding her eyes wider 
open than was needful, to show him she was capable. 

“Nothing to frighten you, darling,” he answered, “but 
plenty to be done. The river is out, and the people are all 
asleep. Most of them will have to wait for their breakfast, 
I fear. We shall have no prayers this morning.” 

“ But plenty of divine service,” rejoined Helen, with a 
smile for what her aunt called one of his whims, as she got 
up and seized some of her garments. 

“ Take time for your bath, dear,” said her husband. 

“ There will be time for that afterward,” she replied. 

“ What shall I do first ? ” 

“ Wake the servants, and tell them to light the kitchen 
fire, and make all the tea and coffee they can. But tell them 
to make it good. We shall get more of every thing as soon 
as it is light. I’ll go and bring the boat. I had it drawn 
up and moored in the ruins ready to float yesterday. I 
wish I hadn’t put on my shirt though : I shall have to swim 
for it, I fear.” 

“ I shall have one aired before you come back,” said 
Helen. 

“ Aired ! ” returned her husband : “ you had better say 


PAUL FABER. 


309 


watered. In five minutes neither of us will have a dry- 
stitch on. I’ll take it off again, and be content with my 
blue jersey.” 

He hurried out into the rain. Happily there was no 
wind. 

Helen waked the servants. Before they appeared she 
had the fire lighted, and as many utensils as it would ac- 
commodate set upon it with water. When Wingfold re- 
turned, he found her in the midst of her household, busily 
preparing every kind of eatable and drinkable they could lay 
hands upon. 

He had brought his boat to the church yard and moored 
it between two headstones : they would have their breakfast 
first, for there was no saying when they might get any 
lunch, and food is work. Besides, there was little to be 
gained by rousing people out of their good sleep : there was 
no danger yet. 

“ It is a great comfort,” said the curate, as he drank his 
coffee, “ to see how Drake goes in heart and soul for his 
tenants. He is pompous— a little, and something of a fine 
gentleman, but what is that beside his great truth ! That 
work of his is the simplest act of Christianity of a public 
kind I have ever seen ! ” 

‘‘ But is there not a great change on him since he had his 
money ? ” said Helen. “ He seems to me so much humbler 
in his carriage and simpler in his manners than before.” 

“ It is quite true,” replied her husband. “ It is mortify- 
ing to think,” he went on after a little pause, “ how many of 
our clergy, from mere beggarly pride, holding their rank 
superior — as better accredited servants of the Carpenter of 
Nazareth, I suppose — would look down on that man as a 
hedge-parson. The world they court looked down upon 
themselves from a yet greater height once, and may come 
to do so again. Perhaps the sooner the better, for then 
they will know which to choose. Now they serve Mammon 
and think they serve God.” 

“ It is not quite so bad as that, surely ! ” said Helen. 

If it is not worldly pride, what is it ? I do not think 
it is spiritual pride. Few get on far enough to be much in 
danger of that worst of all vices. It must then be church- 
pride, and that is the worst form of worldly pride, for it is 
a carrying into the kingdom of Heaven of the habits and 
judgments of the kingdom of Satan. I am wrong ! such 
things can not be imported into the kingdom of Heaven ; 


310 


PAUL FABER. 


they can only be imported into the Church, which is bad 
enough. Helen, the churchman’s pride is a thing to turn a 
saint sick with disgust, so utterly is it at discord with the 
lovely human harmony he imagines himself the minister of. 
He is the Pharisee, it may be the good Pharisee, of the 
kingdom of Heaven ; but if the proud churchman be in the 
kingdom at all, it must be as one of the least in it. I don’t 
believe one in ten who is guilty of this pride is aware of the 
sin of it. Only the other evening I heard a worthy canon 
say, it may have been more in joke than appeared, that he 
would have all dissenters burned. Now the canon would 
not hang one of them — but he does look down on them 
all with contempt. Such miserable paltry weaknesses and 
wickednesses, for in a servant of the Kingdom the feeling 
which suggests such a speech is wicked, are the moth holes 
in the garments of the Church, the teredo in its piles, the 
dry rot in its floors, the scaling and crumbling of its but- 
tresses. They do more to ruin what such men call the 
Church, even in outward respects, than any of the rude 
attacks of those whom they thus despise. He who, in the 
name of Christ, pushes his neighbor from him, is a schis- 
matic, and that of the worst and only dangerous type ! But 
we had better be going. It’s of no use telling you to take 
your waterproof ; you’d only be giving it to the first poor 
woman we picked up.” 

“ I may as well have the good of it till then,” said Helen, 
and ran to fetch it, while the curate went to bring his boat 
to the house. 

When he opened the door, there was no longer a spot of 
earth or of sky to be seen — only water, and the gray sponge 
filling the upper air, through which coursed multitudinous 
perpendicular runnels of water. Clad in a pair of old trow- 
sers and a jersey, he went wading, and where the ground 
dipped, swimming, to the western gate of the churchyard. 
In a few minutes he was at the kitchen window, holding the 
boat in a long painter, for the water, although quite up to 
the rectory walls, was not yet deep enough there to float 
the boat with any body in it. The servants handed him out 
the great,cans they used at school-teas, full of hot coffee, 
and baskets of bread, and he placed them in the boat, cov- 
ering them with a tarpaulin. Then Helen appeared at the 
door, in her waterproof, with a great fur- cloak — to throw 
over him, she said, when she took the oars, for she meant to 
have her share of the fun : it was so seldom there was any 


PAUL FABER. 3I]r 

going on a Sunday ! — How she would have shocked her 
aunt, and better women than she ! 

“ To-day,” said the curate, “ we shall praise God with the 
mirth of the good old hundredth psalm, and not with the 
fear of the more modern version.” 

As he spoke he bent to his oars, and through a narrow 
lane the boat soon shot into Pine-street — now a wide canal, 
banked with houses dreary and dead, save where, from an 
upper window, peeped out here and there a sleepy, dismayed 
countenance. In silence, except for the sounds of the oars, 
and the dull rush of water everywhere, they slipped along. 

This is fun ! ” said Helen, where she sat and steered. 

“ Very quiet fun as yet,” answered the curate. “ But it 
will get faster by and by.’' 

As often as he saw any one at a window, he called out 
that tea and coffee would be wanted for many a poor creat- 
ure’s breakfast. But here they were all big houses, and he 
rowed swiftly past them, for his business lay, not where 
there were servants and well-stocked larders, but where 
there were mothers and children and old people, and little 
but water besides. Nor had they left Pine street by many 
houses before they came where help was right welcome. 
Down the first turning a miserable cottage stood three feet 
deep in the water. Out jumped the curate with the painter 
in his hand, and opened the door. 

On the bed, over the edge of which the water was lapping, 
sat a sickly young woman in her night-dress, holding her 
baby to her bosom. She stared for a moment with big eyes, 
then looked down, and said nothing ; but a rose-tinge 
mounted from her heart to her pale cheek. 

“ Good morning, Martha ! ” said the curate cheerily. 
“ Rather damp — ain’t it ? Where’s your husband ? ” 

“ Away looking for work, sir,” answered Martha, in a 
hopeless tone. 

“ Then he won’t miss you. Come along. Give me the 
baby.” 

“ I can’t come like this, sir. I ain’t got no clothes 
on.” 

“ Take them with you. You can’t put them on : they’re 
all wet. Mrs. Wingfold is in the boat : she’ll see to every 
thing you want. The door’s hardly wide enough to let the 
boat through, or I’d pull it close up to the bed for you to 
get in.” 

She hesitated. 


312 


PAUL FABER. 


Come along,” he repeated. “ I won’t look at you. Or 
wait — I’ll take the baby, and come back for you. Then you 
won’t get so wet.” 

He took the baby from her arms, and turned to the 
door. 

It ain’t you as I mind, sir,” said Martha, getting into the 
water at once and following him, “ — no more’n my own 
people ; but all the town’ll be at the windows by this 
time.” 

Never mind ; we’ll see to you,” he returned. 

In half a minute more, with the help of the windowsill, 
she was in the boat, the fur-cloak wrapped about her and 
the baby, drinking the first cup of the hot coffee. 

We mu.st take her home at once,” said the curate. 

“You said we should have fun ! ” said Helen, the tears 
rushing into her eyes. 

She had left the tiller, and, while the mother drank her 
coffee, was patting the baby under the cloak. But she had 
to betake herself to the tiller again, for the curate was not 
rowing straight. 

When they reached the rectory, the servants might all 
have been grandmothers from the way they received the 
woman and her child. 

“ Give them a warm bath together,” said Helen, “ as 
quickly as possible. — And stay, let me out, Thomas — I must 
go and get Martha some clothes. I shan’t be a min- 
ute.” 

The next time they returned. Wingfold, looking into the 
kitchen, could hardly believe the sweet face he saw by the 
fire, so refined in its comforted sadness, could be that of 
Martha. He thought whether the fine linen, clean and 
white, may not help the righteousness even of the saints a 
little. 

Their next take was a boat-load of children and an old 
grandmother. Most of the houses had a higher story, and 
they took only those who had no refuge. Many more, how- 
ever, drank of their coffee and ate of their bread. The 
whole of the morning they spent thus, calling, on their pas- 
sages, wherever they thought they could get help or find 
accommodation. By noon a score of boats were out render- 
ing similar assistance. The water was higher than it had 
been for many years, and was still rising. Faber had laid 
hands upon an old tub of a salmon-coble, and was the first 
out after the curate. But there was no fun in the poor doc- 


PAUL FABER. 


313 

tor’s boat. Once the curate’s and his met in the middle of 
Pine street — both as full of people as they could carry. 
Wingfold and Helen greeted Faber frankly and kindly. He 
returned their greeting with solemn courtesy, rowing heavily 
past. 

By lunch-time, Helen had her house almost full, and did 
not want to go again : there was so much to be done ! But 
her husband persuaded her to give him one hour more : the 
servants were doing so well ! he said. She yielded. He 
rowed her to the church, taking up the sexton and his boy 
on their way. There the crypts and vaults were full of 
water. Old wood-carvings and bits of ancient coffins were 
floating about in them. But the floor of the church was 
above the water : he landed Helen dry in the porch, and 
led her to the organ-loft. Now the organ was one of great 
power ; seldom indeed, large as the church was, did they 
venture its full force : he requested her to pull out every 
stop, and send the voice of the church, in full blast, into 
every corner of Glaston. He would come back for her in 
half an hour and take her home. He desired the sexton to 
leave all the doors open, and remember that the instrument 
would want every breath of wind he and his boy could 
raise. 

He had just laid hold of his oars, when out of the porch 
rushed a roar of harmony that seemed to seize his boat and 
blow it away upon its mission like a feather — for in the de- 
light of the music the curate never felt the arms that urged 
it swiftly along. After him it came pursuing, and wafted 
him mightily on. Over the brown waters it went rolling, a 
grand billow of innumerable involving and involved waves. 
He thought of the spirit of God that moved on the face of 
the primeval waters, and out of a chaos wrought a cosmos. 

Would,” he said to himself, that ever from the church 
door went forth such a spirit of harmony and healing of 
peace and life ! But the church’s foes are they of her own 
household, who with the axes and hammers of pride and ex- 
clusiveness and vulgar priestliness, break the carved work 
of her numberless chapels, yea, build doorless screens from 
floor to roof, dividing nave and choir and chancel and tran- 
septs and aisles into sections numberless, and, with the evil 
dust they raise, darken for ages the windows of her clere- 
story ! ” 

The curate was thinking of no party, but of individual 
spirit. Of the priestliness I have encountered, I can not de- 


PAUL FABER. 


314 

teimine whether worse belonged to the Church of En^ 
gland or a certain body of Dissenters. 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

THE GATE-LODGE. 

had his horses put to, then taken away again, 
and an old ni'T^ter saddled. But half-way from home he 
came to a burst bridge, and had to return, much to the re- 
lief of his wife, who, when she had him in the house again, 
could enjoy the ram, she said : it was so cosey and comfort- 
able to feel you could not go out, or any body call. I pre- 
sume she therein seemed to take a bond of fate, and doubly 
assure the every-day dullness of her existence. Well, she 
was a good creature, and doubtless a corner would be found 
for her up above, where a little more work would probably 
be required of her. 

Polwarth and his niece Ruth rose late, for neither had 
slept well. When they had breakfasted, they read together 
from the Bible : first the uncle read the passage he had 
last got light upon — he was always getting light upon pas- 
sages, and then the niece the passage she had last been 
gladdened by ; after which they sat and chatted a long time 
by the kitchen fire. 

“ I am afraid your asthma was bad last night, uncle 
dear,” said Ruth. “ I heard your breathing every time I 
woke.” 

“ It was, rather,” answered the little man, “ but I took my 
revenge, and had a good crow over it.” 

“ I know what you mean, uncle : do let me hear the 
crow.” 

He rose, and slowly climbing the stair to his chamber, 
returned with a half sheet of paper in his hand, resumed 
his seat, and read the following lines, which he had written 
in pencil when the light came : 

Satan, avaunt ! 

Nay, take thine hour ; 

Thou canst not daunt, 

Thou hast no power ; 


PAUL FABER. 


315 


Be welcome to thy nest, 

Though it be in my breast. 

Burrow amain ; 

Dig like a mole ; 

Fill every vein 

With half-burned coal ; 

Puff the keen dust about, 

And all to choke me out. 

Fill music’s ways 
With creaking cries, 

That no loud praise 
May climb the skies ; 

And on my laboring chest 
Lay mountains of unrest. 

My slumber steep 
In dreams of haste. 

That only sleep. 

No rest I taste — 

With stiflings, rimes of rote, 

And fingers on the throat. 

Satan, thy might 
I do defy ; 

Live core of night, 

I patient lie : 

A wind comes up the gray 
Will blow thee clean away. 

Christ’s angel, Death, 

All radiant white, 

With one cold breath 
Will scare thee quite. 

And give my lungs an air 
As fresh as answered prayer. 

So, Satan, do 

Thy worst with me. 

Until the True 
Shall set me free, 

And end what He began. 

By making me a man. 

“ It is not much of poetry, Ruth ! ” he said, raising his 
eyes from the paper ; “ — no song of thrush or blackbird ! 
I am ashamed that I called it a cock-crow — for that is one 
of the finest things in the world — a clarion defiance to 
darkness and sin — far too good a name for my poor jingle 
— except, indeed, you call it a Cochin-china-cock-crow — 
from out a very wheezy chest ! ” 

“ ‘ My strength is made perfect in weakness,’ ” said Ruth 


PAUL FABER. 


316 

solemnly, heedless of the depreciation. To her the verses 
were as full of meaning as if she had made them herself. 

“ I think I like the older reading better — that is, without 
the said Polwarth : “ ‘ Strength is made perfect in 

weakness.’ Somehow — I can not explain the feeling — to 
hear a grand aphorism, spoken in widest application, as a 
fact of more than humanity, of all creation, from the mouth 
of the human God, the living Wisdom, seems to bring me 
close to the very heart of the universe. Strength — strength 
itself — all over — is made perfect in weakness ; — a law of 
being, you see, Ruth ! not a law of Christian growth only, 
but a law of growth, even all the growth leading up to the 
Christian, which growth is the highest kind of creation. 
The Master’s own strength was thus perfected, and so must 
be that of His brothers and sisters. Ah, what a strength 
must be his ! — how patient in endurance — how gentle in 
exercise — how mighty in devotion — how fine in its issues, 
perfected by such suffering ! Ah, my child, you suffer 
sorely sometimes*— I know it well ! but shall we not let 
patience have her perfect work, that we may — one day, 
Ruth, one day, my child — be perfect and entire, wanting 
nothing ? ” 

Led by the climax of his tone, Ruth slipped from her 
stool on her knees. Polwarth kneeled beside her, and said : 

“ O Father of life, we praise Thee that one day Thou 
wilt take Thy poor crooked creatures, and give them bodies 
like Christ’s, perfect as His, and full of Thy light. Help us 
to grow faster — as fast as Thou canst help us to grow. 
Help us to keep our eyes on the opening of Thy hand, that 
we may know the manna when it comes. O Lord, we 
rejoice that we are Thy making, though Thy handiwork is 
not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee 
that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain ! 
Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum 
and grind of his wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how 
we love Thee. Fashion the clay to Thy beautiful will. To 
the eyes of men we are vessels of dishonor, but we know 
Thou dost not despise us, for Thou hast made us, and Thou 
dwellest with us. Thou hast made us love Thee, and hope 
in Thee, and in Thy love we will be brave and endure. All 
in good time, O Lord. Amen.” 

While they thus prayed, kneeling on the stone floor of the 
little kitchen, dark under the universal canopy of cloud, 
the rain went on clashing and murmuring all around, rush- 


PAUL FABER. 


317 


ing from the eaves, and exploding with sharp hisses in the 
fire, and in the mingled noise they had neither heard a low 
tap, several times repeated, nor the soft opening of the 
door that followed. When they rose from their knees, it 
was therefore with astonishment they saw a woman standing 
motionless in the doorway, without cloak or bonnet, her 
dank garments clinging to her form and dripping with rain. 

When Juliet woke that morning, she cared little that the 
sky was dull and the earth dark. A selfish sorrow, a selfish 
love even, makes us stupid, and Juliet had been growing 
more and more stupid. Many people, it seems to me, 
through sorrow endured perforce and without a gracious 
submission, slowly sink in the scale of existence. Such are 
some of those middle-aged women, who might be the very 
strength of social well-being, but have no aspiration, and 
hope only downward — after rich husbands for their daugh- 
ters, it may be — a new bonnet or an old coronet — the devil 
knows what. 

Bad as the weather had been the day before, Dorothy had 
yet contrived to visit her, and see that she was provided 
with every necessary; and Juliet never doubted she would 
come that day also. She thought of Dorothy’s ministra- 
tions as we so often do of God’s — as of things that come of 
themselves, for which there is no occasion to be thankful. 

When she had finished the other little house-work required 
for her comfort, a labor in which she found some little res- 
pite from the gnawings of memory and the blankness of 
anticipation, she ended by making up a good fire, though 
without a thought of Dorothy’s being wet when she arrived, 
and sitting down by the window, stared out at the pools, 
spreading wider and wider on the gravel walks beneath her. 
She sat till she grew chilly, then rose and dropped into an 
easy chair by the fire, and fell fast asleep. 

She slept a long time, and woke in a terror, seeming to 
have waked herself with a cry. The fire was out, and the 
hearth cold. She shivered and drew her shawl about her. 
Then suddenly she remembered the frightful dream she had 
had. 

She dreamed that she had just fled from her husband and 
gained the park, when, the moment she entered it, some- 
thing seized her from behind, and bore her swiftly, as in the 
arms of a man — only she seemed to hear the rush of wings 
behind her — the way she had been going. She struggled in 
terror, but in vain ; the power bore her swiftly on, and she 


PAUL FABER. 


318 

knew whither. Her very being recoiled from the horrible 
depth of the motionless pool, in which, as she now seemed 
to know, lived one of the loathsome creatures of the semi- 
chaotic era of the world, which had survived its kind as well 
as its coevals, and was ages older than the human race. The 
pool appeared — but not as she had known it, for it boiled 
and heaved, bubbled and rose. From its lowest depths it 
was moved to meet and receive her ! Coil upon coil it 
lifted itself into the air, towering like a waterspout, then 
stretched out a long, writhing, shivering neck to take her 
from the invisible arms that bore her to her doom. The 
neck shot out a head, and the head shot out the tongue of 
a water-snake. She shrieked and woke, bathed in terror. 

With the memory of the dream not a little of its horror 
returned ; she rose to shake it off, and went to the window. 
What did she see there ? The fearsome pool had entered 
the garden, had come half-way to the house, and was plainly 
rising every moment. More or less the pool had haunted 
her ever since she came ; she had seldom dared go nearer 
it than half-way down the garden. But for the dulling 
influence of her misery, it would have been an unendurable 
horror to her, now it was coming to fetch her as she had 
seen it in her warning dream ! Her brain reeled ; for a 
moment she gazed paralyzed with horror, then turned from 
the window, and, with almost the conviction that the fiend 
of her vision was pursuing her, fled from the house, and 
across the park, through the sheets of rain, to the gate-lodge, 
nor stopped until, all unaware of having once thought of 
him in her terror, she stood at the door of Polwarth's 
cottage. 

Ruth was darting toward her with outstretched hands, 
when her uncle stopped her. 

“ Ruth, my child,” he said, “ run and light a fire in the 
parlor. I will welcome our visitor.” 

She turned instantly, and left the room. Then Polwarth 
went up to Juliet, who stood trembling, unable to utter 
a word, and said, with perfect old-fashioned courtesy, “ You 
are heartily welcome, ma’am. I sent Ruth away that I 
might first assure you that you are as safe with her as with me. 
Sit here a moment, ma’am. You are so wet, I dare not 
place you nearer to the fire. — Ruth ! ” 

She came instantly. 

Ruth,” he repeated, ‘‘ this lady is Mrs. Faber. She is 
come to visit us for a while. Nobody must know of it. — 


PAUL FABER. 


319 


You need not be at all uneasy, Mrs. Faber. Not a soul will 
come near us to-day. But I will lock the door, to secure 
time, if any one should. — You will get Mrs. Faber’s room 
ready at once, Ruth. I will come and help you. But a 
spoonful of brandy in hot water first, please. — Let me move 
your chair a little, ma’am — out of the draught.” 

Juliet in silence did every thing she was told, received the 
prescribed antidote from Ruth, and was left alone in the 
kitchen. 

But the moment she was freed from one dread, she was 
seized by another ; suspicion took the place of terror ; and 
as soon as she heard the toiling of the goblins up the creak- 
ing staircase, she crept to the foot of it after them, and 
with no more compunction than a princess in a fairy-tale, 
set herself to listen. It was not difficult, for the little 
inclosed staircase carried every word to the bottom of it. 

“ I thought she wasn’t dead ! ” she heard Ruth exclaim 
joyfully ; and the words and tone set her wondering. 

“ I saw you did not seem greatly astonished at the sight 
of her ; but what made you think such an unlikely thing ? ” 
rejoined her uncle. 

“ I saw you did not believe she was dead. That was 
enough for me.” 

‘‘You are a witch, Ruth ! I never said a word one way 
or the other.” 

“ Which showed that you were thinking, and made me 
think. You had something in your mind which you did not 
choose to tell me yet.” 

“ Ah, child ! ” rejoined her uncle, in a solemn tone, “ how 
difficult it is to hide any thing ! I don’t think God wants 
any thing hidden. The light is His region. His kingdom, 
His palace-home. It can only be evil, outside or in, that 
makes us turn from the fullest light of the universe. 
Truly one must be born again to enter into the kingdom ! ” 

Juliet heard every word, heard and was bewildered. The 
place in which she had sought refuge was plainly little 
better than a kobold-cave, yet merely from listening to the 
talk of the kobolds without half understanding it, she had 
begun already to feel a sense of safety stealing over her, 
such as she had never been for an instant aware of in the 
Old House, even with Dorothy beside her. 

They went on talking, and she went on listening. They 
were so much her inferiors there could be no impropriety in 
doing so ! 


320 


PAUL FABER. 


“ The poor lady,” she heard the man-goblin say, “ has 
had some difference with her husband ; but whether she 
wants to hide from him or from the whole world or from both, 
she only can tell. Our business is to take care of her, and 
do for her what God may lay to our hand. What she 
desires to hide, is sacred to us. We have no secrets of our 
own, Ruth, and have the more room for those of other peo- 
ple who are unhappy enough to have any. Let God reveal 
what He pleases : there are many who have no right to know 
what they most desire to know. She needs nursing, poor 
thing ! We will pray to God for her.” 

“ But how shall we make her comfortable in such a poor 
little house ? ” returned Ruth. “ It is the dearest place in 
the world to me — but how will she feel in it ? ” 

“ We will keep her warm and clean,” answered her uncle, 
“ and that is all an angel would require.” 

“ An angel ! — yes,” answered Ruth : “ for angels don’t 
eat ; or, at least, if they do, for I doubt if you will grant 
that they don’t, I am certain that they are not so hard to 
please as some people down here. The poor, dear lady is 
delicate — you know she has always been — and I am not 
much of a cook.” 

“ You are a very good cook, my dear. Perhaps you do not 
know a great many dishes, but you are a dainty cook of 
those you do know. Few people can have more need than 
we to be careful what they eat, — we have got such a pair of 
troublesome cranky little bodies ; and if you can suit them, 
I feel sure you will be able to suit any invalid that is not 
fastidious by nature rather than necessity.” 

“ I will do my best,” said Ruth cheerily, comforted by 
her uncle’s confidence. ‘‘ The worst is that, for her own 
sake, I must not get a girl to help me.” 

“ The lady will help you with her own room,” said Pol- 
warth. “ I have a shrewd notion that it is only the fine 
ladies, those that are so little of ladies that they make so much 
of being ladies, who mind doing things with their own 
hands. Now you must go and make her some tea, while 
she gets in bed. She is sure to like tea best.” 

Juliet retreated noiselessly, and when the woman-gnome 
entered the kitchen, there sat the disconsolate lady where 
she had left her, still like the outcast princess of a fairy- 
tale : she had walked in at the door, and they had imme- 
diately begun to arrange for her stay, and the strangest 
thing to Juliet was that she hardly felt it strange. It was 


PAUL FABER. 


321 


only as if she had come a day sooner than she was expected 
— which indeed was very much the case, for Polwarth had 
been looking forward to the possibility, and latterly to the 
likelihood of her becoming their guest. 

“ Your room is ready now,” said Ruth, approaching her 
timidly, and looking up at her with her woman’s childlike 
face on the body of a child. “ Will you come ?” 

Juliet rose and followed her to the garret-room with the 
dormer window, in which Ruth slept. 

“ Will you please get into bed as fast as you can,” she 
said, “ and when you knock on the floor I will come and 
take away your clothes and get them dried. Please to wrap 
this new blanket round you, lest the cold sheets should give 
you a chill. They are well aired, though. I will bring you 
a hot bottle, and some tea. Dinner will be ready soon.” 

So saying she left the chamber softly. The creak of the 
door as she closed it, and the white curtains of the bed and 
window, reminded Juliet of a certain room she once occu- 
pied at the house of an old nurse, where she had been hap- 
pier than ever since in all her life, until her brief bliss with 
Faber : she burst into tears, and weeping undressed and 
got into bed. There the dryness and the warmth and the 
sense of safety soothed her speedily ; and with the comfort 
crept in the happy thought that here she lay on the very 
edge of the high road to Glaston, and that nothing could be 
more probable than that she would soon see her husband 
ride past. With that one hope she could sit at a window 
watching for centuries ! “ O Paul ! Paul ! my Paul ! ” she 

moaned. “ If I could but be made clean again for you ! I 
would willingly be burned at the stake, if the fire would 
only make me clean, for the chance of seeing you again in 
the other world ! ” But as the comfort into her brain, so 
the peace of her new surroundings stole into her heart. 
The fancy grew upon her that she was in a fairy-tale, in 
which she must take every thing as it came, for she could not 
alter the text. Fear vanished ; neither staring eyes nor 
creeping pool could find her in the guardianship of the 
benevolent goblins. She fell fast asleep ; and the large, 
clear, gray eyes of the little woman gnome came and looked 
at her as she slept,- and their gaze did not rouse her. 
Softly she went, and came again ; but, although dinner was 
then ready, Ruth knew better than to wake her. She knew 
that sleep is the chief nourisher in life’s feast, and would not 
withdraw the sacred dish. Her uncle said sleep was God’s 


322 


PAUL FABER. 


contrivance for giving man the help he could not get into 
him while he was awake. So the loving gnomes had their 
dinner together, putting aside the best portions of it against 
the waking of the beautiful lady lying fast asleep above. 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE CORNER OF THE BUTCHER’s SHOP. 

All that same Sunday morning, the minister and Doro- 
thy had of course plenty of work to their hand, for their 
more immediate neighbors were all of the poor. Their own 
house, although situated on the very bank of the river, was 
in no worse plight than most of the houses in the town, for 
it stood upon an artificial elevation ; and before long, while 
it had its lower parts full of water like the rest, its upper 
rooms were filled with people from the lanes around. But 
Mr. Drake’s heart was in the Pottery, for he was anxious as 
to the sufficiency of his measures. Many of the neighbors, 
driven from their homes, had betaken themselves to his 
inclosure, and when he went, he found the salmon-fishers 
still carrying families thither. He set out at once to get 
what bread he could from the baker’s, a quantity of meat 
from the butcher, cheese, coffee, and tins of biscuits and 
preserved meat from the grocers : all within his bounds were 
either his own people or his guests, and he must do what he 
could to feed them. For the first time he felt rich, and 
heartily glad and grateful that he was. He could please 
God, his neighbor, and himself all at once, getting no end 
of good out of the slave of which the unrighteous make a 
god. 

He took Dorothy with him, for he would have felt help- 
less on such an expedition without her judgment ; and, as 
Lisbeth’s hands were more than full, they agreed it was 
better to take Amanda. Dorothy was far from comfortable 
at having to leave Juliet alone all day, but the possibility of 
her being compelled to omit her customary visit had been 
contemplated between them, and she could not fail to 
understand it on this the first occasion. Anyhow, better 
could not be, for the duty at home was far the more press- 


PAUL FABER. 


323 


ing. That day she showed an energy which astonished 
even her father. Nor did she fail of her reward. She 
received insights into humanity which grew to real knowl- 
edge. I was going to say that, next to an insight into the 
heart of God, an insight into the heart of a human being is 
the most precious of things ; but when I think of it — what 
is the latter but the former ? I will say this at least, that 
no one reads the human heart well, to whom the reading 
reveals nothing of the heart of the Father. The wire-gauze 
of sobering trouble over the flaming flower of humanity, 
enabled Dorothy to see right down into its fire-heart, and 
distinguish there the loveliest hues and shades. Where the 
struggle for own life is in abeyance, and the struggle for 
other life active, there the heart that God thought out and 
means to perfect, the pure love-heart of His humans, 
reveals itself truly, and is gracious to behold. For then the 
will of the individual sides divinely with his divine impulse, 
and his heart is unified in good. When the will of the man 
sides perfectly with the holy impulses in him, then all is 
well ; for then his mind is one with the mind of his Maker ; 
God and man are one. 

Amanda shrieked with delight when she was carried to 
the boat, and went on shrieking as she floated over flower- 
beds and box-borders, caught now and then in bushes and 
overhanging branches. But the great fierce current, ridg- 
ing the middle of the brown lake as it followed the tide out 
to the ocean, frightened her a little. The features of the 
flat country were all but obliterated ; trees only and houses 
and corn-stacks stood out of the water, while in the direc- 
tion of the sea where were only meadows, all indication of 
land had vanished ; one wide, brown level was everywhere, 
with a great rushing serpent of water in the middle of it. 
Amanda clapped her little hands in ecstasy. Never was 
there such a child for exuberance of joy ! her aunt thought. 
Or, if there were others as glad, where were any who let 
the light of their gladness so shine before men, invading, 
conquering them as she did with the rush of her joy ! 
Dorothy held fast to the skirt of her frock, fearing every 
instant the explosive creature would jump overboard in 
elemental sympathy. But, poled carefully along by Mr. 
Drake, they reached in safety a certain old shed, and get- 
ting in at the door of the loft where a cow-keeper stored his 
hay and straw, through that descended into the heart of 
the Pottery, which its owner was delighted to find — not 


324 


PAUL FABER. 


indeed dry under foot with such a rain falling, but free 
from lateral invasion. 

His satisfaction, however, was of short duration. Dorothy 
went into one of the nearer dwellings, and he was crossing 
an open space with Amanda, to get help from a certain 
cottage in unloading the boat and distributing its cargo, 
when he caught sight of a bubbling pool in the middle of it. 
Alas ! it was from a drain, whose covering had burst with 
the pressure from within. He shouted for help. Out 
hurried men, women and children on all sides. For a few 
moments he was entirely occupied in giving orders, and let 
Amanda’s hand go : every body knew her, and there seemed 
no worse mischief within reach for her than dabbling in 
the pools, to which she was still devoted. 

Two or three spades were soon plying busily, to make the 
breach a little wider, while men ran to bring clay and stones 
from one of the condemned cottages. Suddenly arose a 
great cry, and the crowd scattered in all directions. The 
wall of defense at the corner of the butcher’s shop had 
given away, and a torrent was galloping across the Pottery, 
straight for the spot where the water was rising from the 
drain. Amanda, gazing in wonder at the fight of the people 
about her, stood right in its course, but took no heed of it, 
or never saw it coming. It caught her, swept her away, 
and tumbled with her, foaming and roaring, into the deep 
foundation of which I have spoken. Her father had just 
missed her, and was looking a little anxiously round, when 
a shriek of horror and fear burst from the people, and they 
rushed to the hole. Without a word spoken he knew 
Amanda was in it. He darted through them, scattering 
men and women in all directions, but pulling off his coat as 
he ran. 

Though getting old, he was far from feeble, and had 
been a strong swimmer in his youth. But he plunged 
heedlessly, and the torrent, still falling some little height, 
caught him, and carried him almost to the bottom. When 
he came to the top, he looked in vain for any sign of the 
child. The crowd stood breathless on the brink. No one 
had seen her, though all eyes were staring into the tumult. 
He dived, swam about beneath, groping in the frightful 
opacity, but still in vain. Then down through the water 
came a shout, and he shot to the surface — to see only 
something white vanish. But the recoil of the torrent from 
below caught her, and just as he was diving again, brought 


PAUL FABER. 


325 


her up almost within arm’s-length of him. He darted to 
her, clasped her, and gained the brink. He could not have 
got out, though the cavity was now brimful, but ready 
hands had him in safety in a moment. Fifty arms were 
stretched to take the child, but not even to Dorothy would 
he yield her. Ready to fall at every step, he blundered 
through the water, which now spread over the whole place, 
and followed by Dorothy in mute agony, was making for 
the shed behind which lay his boat, when one of the salmon 
fishers, who had brought his coble in at the gap, crossed 
them, and took them up. Mr. Drake dropped into the 
bottom of the boat, with the child pressed to his bosom. 
He could not speak. 

“To Doctor Faber’s ! For the child’s life ! ” said Dorothy, 
and the fisher rowed like a madman. 

Faber had just come in. He undressed the child with 
his own hands, rubbed her dry, and did every thing to initi- 
ate respiration. For a long time all seemed useless, but he 
persisted beyond the utmost verge of hope. Mr. Drake 
and Dorothy stood in mute dismay. Neither was quite a 
child of God yet, and in the old man a rebellious spirit 
murmured : it was hard that he should have evil for good ! 
that his endeavors for his people should be the loss of his 
child ! 

Faber was on the point of ceasing his efforts in utter 
despair, when he thought he felt a slight motion of the 
diaphragm, and renewed them eagerly. She began to 
breathe. Suddenly she opened her eyes, looked at him for 
a moment, then with a smile closed them again. To the 
watchers heaven itself seemed to open in that smile. But 
Faber dropped the tiny form, started a pace backward from 
the bed, and stood staring aghast. The next moment he 
threw the blankets over the child, turned away, and almost 
staggered from the room. In his surgery he poured himself 
out a glass of brandy, swallowed it neat, sat down and held 
his head in his hands. An instant after, he was by the 
child’s side again, feeling her pulse, and rubbing her limbs 
under the blankets. 

The minister’s hands had turned blue, and he had begun 
to shiver, but a smile of sweetest delight was on his face. 

“ God bless me ! ” cried the doctor, “ you’ve got no coat 
on ! and you are drenched ! I never saw any thing but the 
child ! ” 

“ He plunged into the horrible hole after her,” said 


326 


PAUL FABER. 


Dorothy. “ How wicked of me to forget him for any child 
under the sun ! He got her out all by himself, Mr. Faber ! 
— Come home, father dear. — I will come back and see to 
Amanda as soon as I have got him to bed." 

“ Yes, Dorothy ; let us go," said the minister, and put 
his hand on her shoulder. His teeth chattered and his 
hand shook. 

The doctor rang the bell violently. 

“ Neither of you shall leave this house to-night. — Take 
a hot bath to the spare bedroom, and remove the sheets," 
he said to the housekeeper, who had answered the summons. 
“ My dear sir," he went on, turning again to the minister, 
“ you must get into the blankets at once. How careless of 
me ! The child’s life will be dear at the cost of yours." 

“ You have brought back the soul of the child to me, Mr. 
Faber," said the minister, trembling, “ and I can never 
thank you enough.” 

“ There won’t be much to thank me for, if you have to go 
instead. — Miss Drake, while I give your father his bath, you 
must go with Mrs. Roberts, and put on dry clothes. Then 
you will be able to nurse him.” 

As soon as Dorothy, whose garments Juliet had been 
wearing so long, was dressed in some of hers, she went to 
her father’s room. He was already in bed, but it was long 
before they could get him warm. Then he grew burning 
hot, and all night was talking in troubled dreams. Once 
Dorothy heard him say, as if he had been talking to God 
face to face : “ O my God, if I had but once seen Thee, I 
do not think I could ever have mistrusted Thee. But I 
could never be quite sure." 

The morning brought lucidity. How many dawns a 
morning brings ! His first words were “ How goes it with 
the child ? ” Having heard that she had had a good night, 
and was almost well, he turned over, and fell fast asleep. 
Then Dorothy, who had been by his bed all night, resumed 
her own garments, and went to the door. 


CHAPTER XLV. 


HERE AND THERE. 

The rain had ceased, and the flood was greatly diminished. 
It was possible, she judged, to reach the Old House, and 
after a hasty breakfast, she set out, leaving her father to 
Mrs. Roberts’s care. The flood left her no choice but go 
by the high road to Polwarth’s gate, and then she 
had often to wade through mud and water. The 
moment she saw the gatekeeper, she knew somehow by his 
face that Juliet was in the lodge. When she entered, she 
saw that already her new circumstances were working upon 
her for peace. The spiritual atmosphere, so entirely human, 
the sense that she was not and would not be alone, the 
strange talk which they held openly before her, the food they 
coaxed her to eat, the whole surrounding of thoughts and 
things as they should be, was operating far more potently 
than could be measured by her understanding of their 
effects, or even consciousness of their influences. She still 
looked down upon the dwarfs, condescended to them, had a 
vague feeling that she honored them by accepting their 
ministration — for which, one day, she would requite them 
handsomely. Not the less had she all the time a feeling 
that she was in the society of ministering spirits of God, 
good and safe and true. From the Old House to the cot- 
tage was from the Inferno to the Purgatorio, across whose 
borders faint wafts from Paradise now and then strayed 
wandering. Without knowing it, she had begun already to 
love the queer little woman, with the wretched body, the 
fine head, and gentle, suffering face ; while the indescriba- 
ble awe, into which her aversion to the kobold, with his 
pigeon-chest, his wheezing breath, his great head, and his big, 
still face, which to such eyes as the curate’s seemed to be 
looking into both worlds at once, had passed over, bore no 
unimportant part in that portion of her discipline here com- 
menced. One of the loftiest spirits of the middle earth, it 
was long before she had quite ceased to regard him as a 
power of the nether world, partly human, and at once some- 
thing less and something more. Yet even already she was 
beginning to feel at home with them ! True, the world in 


328 


PAUL FABER. 


which they really lived was above her spiritual vision, as 
beyond her intellectual comprehension, yet not the less was 
the air around them the essential air of homeness ; for the 
truths in which their spirits lived and breathed, were the same 
which lie at the root of every feeling of home-safety in the 
world, which make the bliss of the child in his mother’s bed, 
the bliss of young beasts in their nests, of birds under their 
mother’s wing. The love which inclosed her was far too 
great for her — as the heaven of the mother’s face is beyond 
the understanding of the new-born child over whom she 
bends ; but that mother’s face is nevertheless the child’s joy 
and peace. She did not yet recognize it as love, saw only 
the ministration ; but it was what she sorely needed : she 
said the scrt of thing suited her, and at once began to fall 
in with it. What it cost her entertainers, with organization 
as delicate as uncouth, in the mere matter of bodily labor, 
she had not an idea — imagined indeed that she gave them 
no trouble at all, because, having overheard the conversation 
between them upon her arrival, she did herself a part of 
the work required for her comfort in her own room. She 
never saw the poor quarters to which Ruth for her sake had 
banished herself — never perceived the fact that there was 
nothing good enough wherewith to repay them except 
worshipful gratitude, love, admiration, and submission — 
feelings she could not even have imagined possible in regard 
to such inferiors. 

And now Dorothy had not a little to say to Juliet about 
her husband. In telling what had taken place, however, she 
had to hear many more questions than she was able to 
answer. 

“ Does he really believe me dead, Dorothy ? ” was one of 
them. 

“ I do not believe there is one person in Glaston who 
knows what he thinks,” answered Dorothy. “ I have not 
heard of his once opening his mouth on the subject. He is 
just as silent now as he used to be ready to talk.” 

My poor Paul ! ” murmured Juliet, and hid her face 
and wept. 

Indeed not a soul in Glaston or elsewhere knew a single 
thought he had. Certain mysterious advertisements in the 
county paper were imagined by some to be his and to refer 
to his wife. Some, as the body had never been seen, did 
begin to doubt whether she was dead. Some, on the other 
hand, hinted that her husband had himself made away with 


PAUL FABER. 


329 


her — for, they argued, what could be easier to a doctor, and 
why, else, did he make no search for the body ? To Doro- 
thy this supposed fact seemed to indicate a belief that she 
was not dead — perhaps a hope that she would sooner betray 
herself if he manifested no anxiety to find her. But she 
said nothing of this to Juliet. 

Her news of him was the more acceptable to the famished 
heart of the wife, that, from his great kindness to them all, 
and especially from the perseverance which had restored to 
them their little Amanda, Dorothy’s heart had so warmed 
toward him, that she could not help speaking of him in a 
tone far more agreeable to Juliet than hitherto she had been 
able to use. His pale, worn look, and the tokens of trouble 
throughout his demeanor, all more evident upon nearer 
approach, had also wrought upon her ; and she so des- 
cribed his care, anxiety, and tenderness over Amanda, that 
Juliet became jealous of the child, as she would have been 
of any dog she saw him caress. When all was told, and she 
was weary of asking questions to which there were no 
answers, she fell back in her chair with a sigh : alas, she 
was no nearer to him for the hearing of her ears ! While 
she lived she was open to his scorn, and deserved it the 
more that she had seemed to die ! She must die ; for then 
at last a little love would revive in his heart, ere he died too 
and followed her nowhither. Only first she must leave him 
his child to plead for her : — she used sometimes to catch 
herself praying that the infant might be like her. 

Look at my jacket ! ” said Dorothy. It was one of 
Juliet’s, and she hoped to make her smile. 

“ Did Paul see you with my clothes on ? ” she said angrily. 

Dorothy started with the pang of hurt that shot through 
her. But the compassionate smile on the face of Polwarth, 
who had just entered, and had heard the last article of the 
conversation, at once set her right. For not only was he 
capable of immediate sympathy with emotion, but of reveal- 
ing at once that he understood its cause. Ruth, who had 
come into the room behind him, second only to her uncle in 
the insight of love, followed his look by asking Dorothy if 
she might go to the Old House, as soon as the weather per- 
mitted, to fetch some clothes for Mrs. Faber, who had 
brought nothing with her but what she wore ; whereupon 
Dorothy, partly for leisure to fight her temper, said she 
would go herself, and went. But when she returned, she 
gave the bag to Ruth at the door, and went away without 


330 


PAUL FABER. 


seeing Juliet again. She was getting tired of her selfishness, 
she said to herself. Dorothy was not herself yet perfect in 
love — which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things. 

Faber too had been up all night — by the bedside of the 
little Amanda. She scarcely needed such close attendance, 
for she slept soundly, and was hardly at all feverish. Four 
or five times in the course of the night, he turned down the 
bed-clothes to examine her body, as if he feared some in- 
jury not hitherto apparent. Of such there was no sign. 

In his youth he had occupied himself much with com- 
parative anatomy and physiology. His predilection for 
these studies had greatly sharpened his observation, and he 
noted many things that escaped the eyes of better than ordi- 
nary observers. Amongst other kinds of things to which he 
kept his eyes open, he was very quick at noting instances of 
the strange persistency with which Nature perpetuates 
minute peculiarities, carrying them on from generation to 
generation. Occupied with Amanda, a certain imperfection 
ill one of the curves of the outer ear attracted his attention. 
It is as rare to see a perfect ear as to see a perfect form, and 
the varieties of unfinished curves are many ; but this imper- 
fection was very peculiar. At the same time it was so slight, 
that not even the eye of a lover, none save that of a man of 
science, alive to minutest indications, would probably have 
seen it. The sight of it startled Faber not a little ; it was 
the second instance of the peculiarity that had come to his 
knowledge. It gave him a new idea to go upon, and when 
the child suddenly opened her eyes, he saw another face 
looking at him out of hers. The idea then haunted him ; 
and whether it was that it assimilated facts to itself, or that 
the signs were present, further search afforded what was to 
him confirmation of the initiatory suspicion. 

Notwithstanding the state of feebleness in which he found 
Mr. Drake the next morning, he pressed him with question 
upon question, amounting to a thorough cross-examination 
concerning Amanda’s history, undeterred by the fact that, 
whether itself merely bored, or its nature annoyed him, his 
patient plainly disrelished his catechising. It was a subject 
which, as his love to the child increased, had grown less and 
less agreeable to Mr. Drake : she was to him so entirely his 
own that he had not the least desire to find out any thing 
about her, to learn a single fact or hear a single conjecture 
to remind him that she was not in every sense as well as the 


PAUL FABER. 


331 


best, his own daughter. He was therefore not a little an- 
noyed at the persistency of the doctor’s questioning, but, 
being a courteous man, and under endless obligation to him 
for the very child’s sake as well as his own, he combated 
disinclination, and with success, acquainting the doctor with 
every point he knew concerning Amanda. Then first the 
doctor grew capable of giving his attention to the minister 
himself ; whose son if he had been, he could hardly have 
shown him greater devotion. A whole week passed before 
he would allow him to go home. Dorothy waited upon him, 
and Amanda ran about the house. The doctor and she had 
been friends from the first, and now, when he was at home, 
there was never any doubt where Amanda was to be found. 

The same day on which the Drakes left him, Faber 
started by the night-train for London, and was absent three 
days. 

Amanda was now perfectly well, but Mr. Drake continued 
poorly. Dorothy was anxious to get him away from the 
river-side, and proposed putting the workmen into the Old 
House at once. To this he readily consented, but would not 
listen to her suggestion that in the meantime he should go 
to some watering-place. He would be quite well in a day or 
two, and there was no rest for him, he said, until the work 
so sadly bungled was properly done. He did not believe 
his plans were defective, and could not help doubting 
whether they had been faithfully carried out. But the 
builder, a man of honest repute, protested also that he could 
not account for the yielding of the wall, except he had had 
the mishap to build over some deep drain, or old well, which 
was not likely, so close to the river. He offered to put it up 
again at his own expense, when perhaps they might discover 
the cause of the catastrophe. 

Sundry opinions and more than one rumor were current 
among the neighbors. At last they were mostly divided 
into two parties, the one professing the conviction that the 
butcher, who was known to have some grudge at the minister, 
had, under the testudo-shelter of his slaughter-house, under- 
mined the wall ; the other indignantly asserting that the 
absurdity had no foundation except in the evil thoughts of 
churchman toward dissenters, being in fact a wicked 
slander. When the suggestion reached the minister’s ears, 
he, knowing the butcher, and believing the builder, was in- 
clined to institute investigations ; but as such a course was 
not likely to lead the butcher to repentance, he resolved in- 


332 


PAUL FABER. 


Stead to consult with him how his premises might be included 
in the defense. The butcher chuckled with conscious suc- 
cess, and for some months always chuckled when sharpen- 
ing his knife ; but by and by the coals of fire began to scorch, 
and went on scorching — the more that Mr. Drake very soon 
became his landlord, and voluntarily gave him several advant- 
ages. But he gave strict orders that there should be no 
dealings with him. It was one thing, he said, to be good to 
the sinner, and another to pass by his fault without con- 
fession, treating it like a mere personal affair which might 
be forgotten. Before the butcher died, there was not a man 
who knew him who did not believe he had undermined the 
wall. He left a will assigning all his property to trustees, for 
the building of a new chapel, but when his affairs came to 
be looked into, there was hardly enough to pay his debts. 

The minister was now subject to a sort of ague, to which 
he paid far too little heed. When Dorothy was not imme- 
diately looking after him, he would slip out in any weather 
to see how things were going on in the Pottery. It was no 
wonder, therefore, that his health did not improve. But he 
could not be induced to regard his condition as at all serious. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

THE minister’s STUDY. 

Helen was in the way of now and then writing music to 
any song that specially took her fancy — not with foolish 
hankering after publication, but for the pleasure of brooding 
in melody upon the words, and singing them to her hus- 
band. One day he brought her a few stanzas, by an unknown 
poet, which, he said, seemed to have in them a slightly new 
element. They pleased her more than him, and began at 
once to sing themselves. No sooner was her husband out of 
the room than she sat down to her piano with them. Before 
the evening, she had written to them an air with a simple 
accompaniment. When she now sung the verses to him, he 
told her, to her immense delight, that he understood and 
liked them far better. The next morning, having carried 
out one or t^o little suggestions he had made, she was sing- 


PAUL FABER.- ^ 333 

ing them by herself in the drawing^^oom, when Faber, to 
whom she had sent because one of her servants was ill, 
entered. He made a sign begging her to continue, and she 
finished the song. 

“ Will you let me see the words,” he said. 

She handed them to him. He read them, laid down the 
manuscript, and, requesting to be taken to his patient, turned 
to the door. Perhaps he thought she had laid a music-snare 
for him. 

The verses were these : 

A YEAR SONG. 

Sighing above, 

Rustling below, 

Through the woods 
The winds go. 

Beneath, dead crowds ; 

Above, life bare ; 

And the besom winds 
Sweep the air. 

Heart, leave thy woe ; 

Let the dead things go. 

Through the brown leaves 
Gold stars push ; 

A mist of green 
Veils the bush. 

Here a twitter, 

There a croak ! 

They are coming — 

The spring-folk ! 

Heart, be not dumb ; 

Let the live things come. 


Through the beach 
The winds go. 

With a long speech, 
Loud and slow. 

The grass is fine. 

And soft to lie in ; 
The sun doth shine 
The blue sky in. 
Heart, be alive ; 

Let the new things thrive. 


Round again ! 

Here now — 

A rimy fruit 

On a bare bough 1 


334 


PAUL FABER. 


There the winter 
And the snow ; 

And a sighing ever 
To fall and go ! 

Heart, thy hour shall be ; 

Thy dead will comfort thee. 

Faber was still folded in the atmosphere of the song when, 
from the curate’s door, he arrived at the minister’s, resolved 
to make that morning a certain disclosure — one he would 
gladly have avoided, but felt bound in honor to make. 
The minister grew pale as he listened, but held his peace. 
Not until the point came at which he found himself person- 
ally concerned, did he utter a syllable. 

I will in my own words give the substance of the doctor’s 
communication, stating the facts a little more fairly to him 
than his pride would allow him to put them in his narrative. 

Paul Faber was a student of St. Bartholomew’s, and dur- 
ing some time held there the office of assistant house-sur- 
geon. Soon after his appointment, he being then three and 
twenty, a young woman was taken into one of the wards, in 
whom he gradually grew much interested. Her complaint 
caused her much suffering, but was more tedious than 
dangerous. 

Attracted by her sweet looks, but more by her patience, 
and the gratitude with which she received the attention 
shown her, he began to talk to her a little, especially during 
a slight operation that had to be not unfrequently performed. 
Then he came to giving her books to read, and was often 
charmed with the truth and simplicity of the remarks she 
would make. She had been earning her living as a clerk, 
had no friends in London, and therefore no place to betake 
herself to in her illness but the hospital. The day she left 
it, in the simplicity of her heart, and with much timidity, 
she gave him a chain she had made for him of her hair. On 
the ground of supplementary attention, partly desirable, 
partly a pretext, but unassociated with any evil intent, he 
visited her after in her lodging. The joy of her face, the 
light of her eyes when he appeared, was enchanting to him. 
She pleased every gentle element of his nature ; her worship 
flattered him, her confidence bewitched him. His feelings 
toward her were such that he never doubted he was her 
friend. He did her no end of kindness ; taught her much ; 
gave her good advice as to her behavior, and the dangers 
she was in \ would have protected her from every enemy. 


PAUL FABER. 


335 


real and imaginary, while all the time, undesignedly, he was 
depriving her of the very nerve of self-defense. He still 
gave her books — and good books — Carlyle even, and Ten- 
nyson ; read poetry with her, and taught her to read aloud ; 
went to her chapel with her sometimes of a Sunday evening 
— for he was then, so he said, and so he imagined, a thorough 
believer in revelation. He took her to the theater, to pic- 
tures, to concerts, taking every care of her health, her man- 
ners, her principles. But one enemy he forgot to guard her 
against : how is a man to protect even the woman he loves 
from the hidden god of his idolatry — his own grand con- 
temptible self ? 

It is needless to' set the foot of narration upon every step 
of the slow-descending stair. With all his tender feelings 
and generous love of his kind, Paul Faber had not yet 
learned the simplest lesson of humanity — that he who would 
not be a murderer, must be his brother’s keeper — still more 
his sister’s, protecting every woman first of all from himself 
— from every untruth in him, chiefly from every unhallowed 
approach of his lower nature, from every thing that calls 
itself love and is but its black shadow, i ts demon ever mur- 
muring that it may devour. The priceless reward of 
such honesty is the power to love better ; but let no man in- 
sult his nature by imagining himself noble for so carrying 
himself. As soon let him think himself noble that he is no 
swindler. Doubtless Faber said to himself as well as to her, 
and said it yet oftener when the recoil of his selfishness struck 
upon the door of his conscience and roused Don Worm, 
that he would be true to her forever. But what did he 
mean by the words ? Did he know ? Had they any sen.se 
of which he would not have been ashamed even before the 
girl herself ? Would such truth as he contemplated make 
of him her hiding-place from the wind, her covert from the 
tempest ? He never even thought whether to marry her or 
not, never vowed even in his heart not to marry another, AU 
he could have said was, that at the time he had no intention 
of marrying another, and that he had the inter\tio.n, of keep-, 
ing her for himself indefinitely, which may be all the. potip,^ 
some people have of eternally. But things \4^ent well ’witf^ 
them, and they seemed to themselves^ notwithstaociing the. 
tears shed by one of them in secret, only the betteij’.' for the 
relation between them. 

At length a phllcf was born. The heart of a woman is 
indeed inftpitej^ but time, her presence, her thoughts, her 


336 


PAUL FABER. 


hands are finite : she could not seem so much a lover as be- 
fore, because she must be a mother now : God only can think 
of two things at once. In his enduring selfishness, Faber felt 
the child come between them, and reproached her neglect, 
as he called it. She answered him gently and reasonably ; 
but now his bonds began to weary him. She saw it, and in 
the misery of the waste vision opening before her eyes, her 
temper, till now sweet as devoted, began to change. And 
yet, while she loved her child the more passionately that she 
loved her forebodingly, almost with the love of a woman 
already forsaken, she was nearly mad sometimes with her own 
heart, that she could not give herself so utterly as before to 
her idol. 

It took but one interview after he had confessed it to him- 
self, to reveal the fact tocher that she had grown a burden to 
him. He came a little seldomer, and by degrees which 
seemed to her terribly rapid, more and more seldom. He 
had never recognized duty in his relation to her. I do not 
mean that he had not done the effects of duty toward her ; 
love had as yet prevented the necessity of appeal to the stern 
daughter of God. But what love with which our humanity 
is acquainted can keep healthy without calling in the aid of 
Duty ? Perfect Love is the mother of all duties and all 
virtues, and needs not be admonished of her children ; but 
not until Love is perfected, may she, casting out Fear, for- 
get also Duty. And hence are th e conditions of such a 
relation altogether incongruous. For the moment the man, 
not yet debased, admits a thought of duty, he is aware that 
far more is demanded of him than, even for the sake of 
purest right, he has either the courage or the conscience to 
yield. But even now Faber had not the most distant inten- 
tion of forsaking her; only why should he let her burden him, 
and make his life miserable ? There were other pleasures 
besides the company of the most childishly devoted of 
women : why should he not take them ? Why should he 
give all his leisure to one who gave more than the half of it 
to her baby ? 

He had money of his own, and, never extravagant upon 
himself, was more liberal to the poor girl than ever she 
desired. But there was nothing mercenary in her. She 
was far more incapable of turpitude than he, for she was of 
a higher nature, and loved much where he loved only a 
little. She was nobler, sweetly prouder than he. She had 
sacrificed all to him for love — could accept nothing from 


PAUL FABER. 


337 


him without the love which alone is the soul of any gift, 
alone makes it rich. She would not, could not see him 
unhappy. In her fine generosity, struggling to be strong, 
she said to herself, that, after all, she would leave him richer 
than she was before — richer than he was now. He would 
not want the child he had given her ; she would, and she 
could, live for her, upon the memory of two years of such 
love as, comforting herself in sad womanly pride, she flattered 
herself woman had seldom enjoyed. She would not throw 
the past from her because the weather of time had changed ; 
she would not mar every fair memory with the inky sponge 
of her present loss. She would turn her back upon her sun 
ere he set quite, and carry with her into the darkness the 
last gorgeous glow of his departure. While she had his 
child, should she never see him again, there remained a 
bond between them — a bond that could never be broken. 
He and she met in that child’s life — her being was the 
eternal fact of their unity. 

Both she and he had to learn that there was yet a closer 
bond between them, necessary indeed to the fact that a 
child couldho, born of them, namely, that they two had issued 
from the one perfect Heart of love. And every heart of 
perplexed man, although, too much for itself, it can not 
conceive how the thing should be, has to learn that there, 
in that heart whence it came, lies for it restoration, consola- 
tion, content. Herein, O God, lies a task for Thy perfec- 
tion, for the might of Thy imagination — which needs but 
Thy will (and Thy suffering ?) to be creation ! 

One evening when he paid her a visit after the absence 
of a week, he found her charmingly dressed, and merry, 
but in a strange fashion which he could not understand. The 
baby, she said, was down stairs with the landlady, and she 
free for her Paul. She read to him, she sang to him, she 
bewitched him afresh with the graces he had helped to 
develop in her. He said to himself when he left her that 
surely never was there a more gracious creature — and she 
was utterly his own ! It was the last flicker of the dying 
light — the gorgeous sunset she had resolved to carry with 
her in her memory forever. When he sought her again 
the next evening, he found her landlady in tears. She had 
vanished, taking with her nothing but her child, and her 
child’s garments. The gown she had worn the night before 
hung in her bedroom — every thing but what she must then 
be wearing was left behind. The woman wept, spoke of 


PAUL FABER. 


338 

her with genuine affection, and said she had paid every thing. 
To his questioning she answered that they had gone away 
in a cab : she had called it, but knew neither the man nor 
his number. Persuading himself she had but gone to see 
some friend, he settled himself in her rooms to await her 
return, but a week rightly served to consume his hope. The 
iron entered into his soul, and for a time tortured him. He 
wept — but consoled himself that he wept, for it proved to 
himself that he was not heartless. He comforted himself 
further in the thought that she knew where to find him and 
that when trouble came upon her, she would remember how 
good he had been to her, and what a return she had made 
for it. Because he would not give up every thing to her, 
liberty and all, she had left him ! And in revenge, having 
so long neglected him for the child, she had for the last 
once roused in her every power of enchantment, had brought 
her every charm into play, that she might lastingly bewitch 
him with the old spell, and the undying memory of their 
first bliss — then left him to his lonely misery ! She had 
done what she could for the ruin of a man of education, a 
man of family, a man on the way to distinction ! — a man of 
genius, he said even, but he was such only as every man is : 
he was a man of latent genius. 

But verily, though our sympathy goes all with a woman 
like her, such a man, howeuer little he deserves, and however 
much he would scorn it, is far more an object of pity. She 
has her love, has not been false thereto, and one day will 
through suffering find the path to the door of rest. When 
she left him, her soul was endlessly richer than his. The 
music, of which he said she knew nothing, in her soul moved 
a deep wave, while it blew but a sparkling ripple on his ; 
the poetry they read together echoed in a far profounder 
depth of her being, and I do not believe she came to loathe 
it as he did ; and when she read of Him who reasoned that 
the sins of a certain woman must have been forgiven her, 
else how could she love so much, she may well have been able, 
from the depth of such another loving heart, to believe 
utterly in Him — while we know that her poor, shrunken 
lover came to think it manly, honest, reasonable, meritorious 
to deny Him. 

Weeks, months, years passed, but she never sought 
him ; and he so far forgot her by ceasing to think of her, 
that at length, when a chance bubble did rise from the 
drowned memory, it broke instantly and vanished. As to 


PAUL FABER. 


339 


the child, he had almost forgotten whether it was a boy or 
a girl. 

But since, in his new desolation, he discovered her, 
beyond a doubt, in the little Amanda, old memories had 
been crowding back upon his heart, and he had begun to 
perceive how Amanda’s mother must have felt when she saw 
his love decaying visibly before her, and to suspect that it 
was in the self-immolation of love that she had left him. 
His own character had been hitherto so uniformly pervaded 
with a refined selfishness as to afford no standpoint of a 
different soil, whence by contrast to recognize the true nature 
of the rest ; but now it began to reveal itself to his con- 
scious judgment. And at last it struck him that twice he 
had been left — by women whom he loved — at least by women 
who loved him. Two women had trusted him utterly, and 
he had failed them both ! Next followed the thought 
stinging him to the heart, that the former was the purer of 
the two ; that the one on whom he had looked down because 
of her lack of education, and her familiarity with humble 
things and simple forms of life, knew nothing of what men 
count evil, while she in whom he had worshiped refinement, 
intellect, culture, beauty, song — she who, in love-teachable- 
ness had received his doctrine against all the prejudices of 
her education, was what she had confessed herself ! 

But, against all reason and logic, the result of this com- 
parison was, that Juliet returned fresh to his imagination in 
all the first witchery of her loveliness ; and presently he 
found himself for the first time making excuses for her ; if 
she had deceived him she had deceived him from love ; 
whatever her past, she had been true to him, and was, from 
the moment she loved him, incapable of wrong. — He had 
cast her from him, and she had sought refuge in the arms 
of the only rival he ever would have had to fear — the bare- 
ribbed Death ! 

Naturally followed the reflection — what was he to demand 
purity of any woman ? — Had he not accepted — yes, tempted, 
enticed from the woman who preceded her, the sacrifice of 
one of the wings of her soul on the altar of his selfishness ! 
then driven her from him, thus maimed and helpless, to the 
mercy of the rude blasts of the world ! She, not he ever, 
had been the noble one, the bountiful giver, the victim 
of shameless ingratitude. Flattering himself that misery 
would drive her back to him, he had not made a single effort 
to find her, or mourned that he could never make up to her 


340 


PAUL FABER. 


for the wrongs he had done her. He had not even hoped 
for a future in which he might humble himself before her ! 
What room was there here to talk of honor ! If she had not 
sunk to the streets it was through her own virtue, and none 
of his care ! And now she was dead ! and his child, but for 
the charity of a despised superstition, would have been 
left an outcast in the London streets, to wither into the 
old-faced weakling of a London workhouse ! 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

THE BLOWING OF THE WIND. 

Smaller and smaller Faber felt as he pursued his plain, 
courageous confession of wrong to the man whose life was 
even now in peril for the sake of his neglected child. 
When he concluded with the expression of his conviction 
that Amanda was his daughter, then first the old minister 
spoke. His love had made him guess what was coming, 
and he was on his guard. 

“ May I ask what is your object in making this statement 
to me, Mr. Faber ? ” he said coldly. 

“ I am conscious of none but to confess the truth, and 
perform any duty that may be mine in consequence of the 
discovery,” said the doctor. 

‘‘ Do you wish this truth published to the people of Glas- 
ton ? ” inquired the minister, in the same icy tone. 

I have no such desire : but I am of course prepared to 
confess Amanda my child, and to make you what amends 
may be possible for the trouble and expense she has occa- 
sioned you.” 

“Trouble! Expense!” cried the minister fiercely. 
“ Do you mean in your cold-blooded heart, that, because 
you, who have no claim to the child but that of self-indul- 
gence — because you believe her yours, I who have for years 
carried her in my bosom, am going to give her up to a man, 
who, all these years, has made not one effort to discover his 
missing child ? In the sight of God, which of us is her 
father ? But I forget ; that is a question you can not 
understand. Whether or not you are her father, I do not 


PAUL FABER. 


341 


care a straw. You have not proved it ; and I tell you that, 
until the court of chancery orders me to deliver up my dar- 
ling to you, to be taught there is no living Father of men — 
and that by the fittest of all men to enforce the lie — not 
until then will I yield a hair of her head to you. God grant, 
if you were her father, her mother had more part in her 
than you ! — A thousand times rather I would we had both 
perished in the roaring mud, than that I should have to 
give her up to you.” 

He struck his fist on the table, rose, and turned from 
him. Faber also rose, quietly, silent and pale. He stood a 
moment, waiting. Mr. Drake turned. Faber made him an 
obeisance, and left the room. 

The minister was too hard upon him. He would not 
have been so hard but for his atheism ; he would not have 
been so hard if he could have seen into his soul. But 
Faber felt he deserved it. Ere he reached home, however, 
he had begun to think it rather hard that, when a man con- 
fessed a wrong, and desired to make what reparation he 
could, he should have the very candor of his confession 
thus thrown in his teeth. Verily, even toward the righteous 
among men, candor is a perilous duty. 

He entered the surgery. There he had been making 
some experiments with peroxide of manganese, a solution 
of which stood in a bottle on the table. A ray of brilliant 
sunlight was upon it, casting its shadow on a piece of white 
paper, a glorious red. It caught his eyes. He could never 
tell what it had to do with the current of his thoughts, but 
neither could he afterward get rid of the feeling that 
it had had some influence upon it. For as he looked at it, 
scarcely knowing he did, and thinking still how hard the 
minister had been upon him, suddenly he found himself in 
the minister’s place, and before him Juliet making her sad 
confession : how had he met that confession ? The whole 
scene returned, and for the first time struck him right on 
the heart, and then first he began to be in reality humbled 
in his own eyes. What if, after all, he was but a poor creat- 
ure ? What if, instead of having any thing to be proud of, 
he was in reality one who, before any jury of men or women 
called to judge him, must hide his head in shame ? 

The thought once allowed to enter and remain long 
enough to be questioned, never more went far from him. 
For a time he walked in the midst of a dull cloud, first of 
dread, then of dismay — a cloud from which came thunders, 


342 


PAUL FABER. 


and lightnings, and rain. It passed, and a doubtful dawn 
rose dim and scared upon his consciousness, a dawn in 
which the sun did not appear, and on which followed a gray, 
solemn day. A humbler regard of himself had taken the 
place of confidence and satisfaction. An undefined hunger, 
far from understood by himself, but having vaguely for its 
object clearance and atonement and personal purity even, 
had begun to grow, and move within him. The thought 
stung him with keen self-contempt, yet think he must and 
did, that a woman might be spotted not a little, and yet be 
good enough for him in the eyes of retributive justice. He 
saw plainly that his treatment of his wife, knowing what he 
did of himself, was a far worse shame than any fault of 
which a girl, such as Juliet was at the time, could have been 
guilty. And with that, for all that he believed it utterly in 
vain, his longing after the love he had lost, grew and grew, 
ever passing over into sickening despair, and then spring- 
ing afresh ; he longed for Juliet as she had prayed to him — 
as the only power that could make him clean ; it seemed 
somehow as if she could even help him in his repentance 
for the wrong done to Amanda’s mother. The pride of the 
Pharisee was gone, the dignity of the husband had vanished, 
and his soul longed after the love that covers a multitude 
of sins, as the air in which alone his spirit could breathe 
and live and find room. I set it down briefly : the change 
passed upon him by many degrees, with countless alter- 
nations of mood and feeling, and without the smallest con- 
scious change of opinion. 

The rest of the day after receiving Faber’s communi- 
cation, poor Mr. Drake roamed about like one on the verge 
of insanity, struggling to retain lawful dominion over his 
thoughts. At times he was lost in apprehensive melancholy, 
at times roused to such fierce anger that he had to restrain 
himself from audible malediction. The following day 
Dorothy would have sent for Faber, for he had a worse 
attack of the fever than ever before, but he declared that 
the man should never again cross his threshold. Dorothy 
concluded there had been a fresh outbreak between them 
of the old volcano. He grew worse and worse, and did not 
object to her sending for Dr. Mather ; but he did not do 
him much good. He was in a very critical state, and Doro- 
thy was miserable about him. The fever was persistent, 
and the cough which he had had ever since the day that 
brought his illness, grew worse. His friends would gladly 


PAUL FABER. 343 

have prevailed upon him to seek a warmer climate, but he 
would not hear of it. 

Upon one occasion, Dorothy, encouraged by the presence 
of Dr. Mather, was entreating him afresh to go somewhere 
from home for a while. 

“No, no: what would become of my money?” he 
answered, with a smile which Dorothy understood. The 
doctor imagined it the speech of a man whom previous pov- 
erty and suddenly supervening wealth had made penurious. 

“ Oh ! ” he remarked reassuringly, “ you need not spend 
a penny more abroad than you do at home. The difference 
in the living would, in some places, quite make up for the 
expense of the journey.” 

The minister looked bewildered for a moment, then 
seemed to find himself, smiled again, and replied — 

“You do not quite understand me : I have a great deal 
of money to spend, and it ought to be spent here in En- 
gland where it was made — God knows how.” 

“ You may get help to spend it in England, without 
throwing your life away with it,” said the doctor, who could 
not help thinking of his own large family. 

“ Yes, I dare say I might — from many — but it was given 
me to spend — in destroying injustice, in doing to men as 
others ought to have done to them. My preaching was 
such a poor affair that it is taken from me, and a lower call- 
ing given me — to spend money. If I do not well with that, 
then indeed I am a lost man. If I be not faithful in that 
which is another’s, who will give me that which is my own ? 
If I can not further the coming of Christ, I can at least make 
a road or two, exalt a valley or two, to prepare His way before 
Him.” 

Thereupon it was the doctor’s turn to smile. All that 
was to him as if spoken in a language unknown, except 
that he recognized the religious tone in it. “ The man is 
true to his profession,” he said to himself, “ — as he ought 
to be of course ; but catch me spending my money that 
way, if I had but a hold of it ! ” 

His father died soon after, and he got a hold of the 
money he called his^ whereupon he parted with his prac- 
tice, and by idleness and self-indulgence, knowing all the 
time what he was about, brought on an infirmity which no 
skill could cure, and is now a grumbling invalid, at one or 
another of the German spas. I mention it partly because 
many preferred this man to Faber on the ground that he 


344 


PAUL FABER. 


went to church every Sunday, and always shook his head at 
the other’s atheism. 

Faber wrote a kind, respectful letter, somewhat injured in 
tone, to the minister, saying he was much concerned to hear 
that he was not so well, and expressing his apprehension 
that he himself had been in some measure the cause 
of his relapse. He begged leave to assure him that he 
perfectly recognized the absolute superiority of Mr. Drake’s 
claim to the child. He had never dreamed of asserting any 
right in her, except so much as was implied in the acknowl- 
edgment of his duty to restore the expense which his 
wrong and neglect had caused her true father ; beyond 
that he well knew he could make no return save in grati- 
tude ; but if he might, for the very partial easing of his 
conscience, be permitted to supply the means of the child s 
education, he was ready to sign an agreement that all else 
connected with it should be left entirely to Mr. Drake. He 
begged to be allowed to see her sometimes, for, long ere a 
suspicion had crossed his mind that she was his, the child 
was already dear to him. He was certain that her mother 
would have much preferred Mr. Drake’s influence to his 
own, and for her sake also, he would be careful to disturb 
nothing. But he hoped Mr. Drake would remember that, 
however unworthy, he was still her father. 

The minister was touched by the letter, moved also in the 
hope that an arrow from the quiver of truth had found in 
the doctor a vulnerable spot. He answered that he should 
be welcome to see the child when he would ; and that she 
should go to him when he pleased. He must promise, 
however, as the honest man every body knew him to be, 
not to teach her there was no God, or lead her to despise 
the instructions she received at home. 

The word honest to Faber like a blow. He had come 
to the painful conclusion that he was neither honest man 
nor gentleman. Doubtless he would have knocked any one 
down who told him so, but then who had the right to take 
with him the liberties of a conscience ? Pure love only, I 
suspect, can do that without wrong. He would not try less 
to be honest in the time to come, but he had never been, 
and could no more ever feel honest. It did not matter 
much. What was there worth any effort ? All was flat and 
miserable — a hideous long life ! What did it matter what 
he was, so long as he hurt nobody any more ! He was tired 
of it all. 


PAUL FABER. 


345 


It added greatly to his despondency that he found he 
could no longer trust his temper. That the cause might be 
purely physical was no consolation to him. He had been 
accustomed to depend on his imperturbability, and now he 
could scarcely recall the feeling of the mental condition. 
He did not suspect how much the change was owing to his 
new-gained insight into his character, and the haunting 
dissatisfaction it caused. 

To the minister he replied that he had been learning a 
good deal of late, and among other things that the casting 
away of superstition did not necessarily do much for the 
development of the moral nature ; in consequence of which 
discovery, he did not feel bound as before to propagate the 
negative portions of his creed. If its denials were true, he 
no longer believed them powerful for good ; and merely as 
facts he did not see that a man was required to disseminate 
them. Even here, however, his opinion must go for little, 
seeing he had ceased to care much for any thing, true or 
false. Life was no longer of any value to him, except in- 
deed he could be of service to Amanda. Mr. Drake n?ight 
be assured she was the last person on whom he would wish 
to bring to bear any of the opinions so objectionable in his 
eyes. He would make him the most comprehensive prom- 
ise to that effect. Would Mr. Drake allow him to say one 
thing more ? — He was heartily ashamed of his past history ; 
and if there was one thing to make him wish there were a 
God — of which he saw no chance — it was that he might beg 
of Him the power to make up for the wrongs he had done, 
even if it should require an eternity of atonement. Until 
he could hope for that, he must sincerely hold that his was 
the better belief, as well as the likelier — namely, that the 
wronger and the wronged went into darkness, friendly with 
oblivion, joy and sorrow alike forgotten, there to bid adieu 
both to reproach and self-contempt. For himself he had no 
desire after prolonged existence. Why should he desire to 
live a day, not to say forever — worth nothing to himself, or 
to any one ? If there were a God, he would rather entreat 
Him, and that he would do humbly enough, to unmake him 
again. Certainly, if there were a God, He had not done 
over well by His creatures, making them so ignorant and 
feeble that they could not fail to fall. Would Mr. Drake 
have made his Amanda so ? 

When Wingfold read the letter of which I have thus 
given the substance— it was not until a long time after, 


346 


PAUL FABER. 


in Polwarth’s room — he folded it softly together and 
said : 

“ When he wrote that letter, Paul Faber was already be- 
coming not merely a man to love, but a man to revere.” 
After a pause he added, “ But what a world it would be, 
filled with contented men, all capable of doing the things 
for which they would despise themselves.” 

It was some time before the minister was able to answer 
the letter except by sending Amanda at once to the doctor 
with a message of kind regards and thanks. But his ina- 
bility to reply was quite as much from the letter’s giving 
him so much to think of first, as from his weakness and 
fever. For he saw that to preach, as it was commonly un- 
derstood, the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins to such a 
man, would be useless : he would rather believe in a God 
who would punish them, than in One who would pass them 
by. To be told he was forgiven, would but rouse in him 
contemptuous indignation. “ What is that to me ? ” he 
would return. “ I remain what I am.” Then grew up in 
the mind of the minister the following plant of thought : 

Things divine can only be shadowed in the human ; what 
is in man must be understood of God with the divine differ- 
ence — not only of degree, but of kind, involved in the fact 
that He makes me, I can make nothing, and if I could, 
should yet be no less a creature of Him the Creator ; there- 
fore, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so His 
thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and what we call His 
forgiveness may be, must be something altogether trans- 
cending the conception of man — overwhelming to such 
need as even that of Paul Faber, whose soul has begun to 
hunger after righteousness, and whose hunger must be a 
hunger that will not easily be satisfied.” For a poor nature 
will for a time be satisfied with a middling God ; but as the 
nature grows richer, the ideal of the God desired grows 
greater. The true man can be satisfied only with a God of 
magnificence, never with a God such as in his childhood and 
youth had been presented to Faber as the God of the Bible. 
That God only whom Christ reveals to the humble seeker, 
can ever satisfy human soul. 

Then it came into the minister’s mind, thinking over 
Faber’s religion toward his fellows, and his lack toward God, 
how when the young man asked Jesus what commandments 
he must keep up that he might inherit eternal life, Jesus 
did not say a word concerning those of the first table — not 


PAUL FABER. 


347 


a word, that is, about his duty toward God ; He spoke only 
of his duty toward man. Then it struck him that our Lord 
gave him no sketch or summary or part of a religious sys- 
tem — only told him what he asked, the practical steps by 
which he might begin to climb toward eternal life. One 
thing he lacked — namely, God Himself, but as to how God 
would meet him, Jesus says nothing, but Himself meets him 
on those steps with the offer of God. He treats the duties 
of the second table as a stair to the first — a stair which, 
probably by its crumbling away in failure beneath his feet 
as he ascended, would lift him to such a vision and such a 
horror of final frustration, as would make him stretch forth 
his hands, like the sinking Peter, to the living God, the life 
eternal which he blindly sought, without whose closest 
presence he could never do the simplest duty aright, even 
of those he had been doing from his youth up. His meas- 
ure of success, and his sense of utter failure, would together 
lift him toward the One Good. 

Thus, looking out upon truth from the cave of his 
brother’s need, and seeing the direction in which the 
shadow of his atheism fell, the minister learned in what di- 
rection the clouded light lay, and turning his gaze thither- 
ward, learned much. It is only the aged who have dropped 
thinking that become stupid. Such can learn no more, 
until first their young nurse Death has taken off their clothes, 
and put the old babies to bed. Of such was not Walter 
Drake. Certain of his formerly petted doctrines he now 
threw away as worse than rubbish ; others he dropped with 
indifference ; of some it was as if the angels picked his pock- 
ets without his knowing it, or ever missing them ; and still 
he found, whatever so-called doctrine he parted with, that 
the one glowing truth which had lain at the heart of it, bur- 
ied, mired, obscured, not only remained with him, but shone 
out fresh, restored to itself by the loss of the clay-lump of 
worldly figures and phrases, in which the human intellect 
had inclosed it. His faith was elevated, and so confirmed. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 


THE BORDER-LAND. 

Mr. Drew, the draper, was, of all his friends, the one who 
most frequently visited his old pastor. He had been the 
first, although a deacon of the church, in part to forsake his 
ministry, and join the worship of, as he honestly believed, a 
less scriptural community, because in the abbey church he 
heard better news of God and His Kingdom : to him rightly 
the gospel was every thing, and this church or that, save for 
its sake, less than nothing and vanity. It had hurt Mr. 
Drake not a little at first, but he found Drew in consequence 
only the more warmly his personal friend, and since learn- 
ing to know Wingfold, had heartily justified his defection ; 
and now that he was laid up, he missed something any day 
that passed without a visit from the draper. One evening 
Drew found him very poorly, though neither the doctor nor 
Dorothy could prevail upon him to go to bed. He could not 
rest, but kept walking about, his eye feverish, his pulse flut- 
tering. He welcomed his friend even more warmly than 
usual, and made him sit by the fire, while he paced the 
room, turning and turning, like a caged animal that fain 
would be king of infinite space. 

“ I am sorry to see you so uncomfortable,” said Mr. Drew. 

** On the contrary, I feel uncommonly well,” replied the 
pastor. “ I always measure my health by my power of 
thinking ; and to-night my thoughts are like birds — or like 
bees rather, that keep flying in delight from one lovely 
blossom to another. Only the fear keeps intruding that an 
hour may be at hand, when my soul will be dark, and it will 
seem as if the Lord had forsaken me.” 

** But does not our daily bread mean our spiritual as well 
as our bodily bread ? ” said the draper. “ Is it not just as 
wrong in respect of the one as of the other to distrust God 
for to-morrow when you have enough for to-day ? Is He a 
God of times and seasons, of this and that, or is He the All 
in all ? ” 

“ You are right, old friend,” said the minister, and ceas- 
ing his walk, he sat down by the fire opposite him. “ I am 
faithless still. — O Father in Heaven, give us this day our 


PAUL FABER. 


349 


daily bread. — I suspect, Drew, that I have had as yet no 
more than the shadow of an idea how immediately I — we live 
upon the Father. — I will tell you something. I had been 
thinking what it would be if God were now to try me with 
heavenly poverty, as for a short time he tried me with earthly 
poverty — that is, if he were to stint me of life itself — not 
give me enough of Himself to live upon — enough to make 
existence feel a good. The fancy grew to a fear, laid hold 
upon me, and made me miserable. Suppose, for instance, 
I said to myself, I were no more to have any larger visita- 
tion of thoughts and hopes and aspirations than old Mrs. 
Bloxam, who sits from morning to night with the same stock- 
ing on her needles, and absolutely the same expression, of 
as near nothing as may be upon human countenance, nor 
changes whoever speaks to her ! ” 

“ She says the Lord is with her,” suggested ,the draper. 

“Well ! ” rejoined the minister, in a slow, cogitative tone. 

“ And plainly life is to her worth having,” added the 
draper. “ Clearly she has as much of life as is necessary to 
her present stage.” 

“ You are right. I have been saying just the same 
things to myself ; and, I trust, when the Lord comes. He 
will not find me without faith. But just suppose life were 
to grow altogether uninteresting ! Suppose certain moods 
— such as you, with all your good spirits and blessed temper, 
must surely 'sometimes have experienced — suppose they 
were to become fixed, and life to seem utterly dull, God 
nowhere, and your own dreary self, and nothing but that 
self, everywhere ! ” 

“ Let me read you a chapter of St. John,” said the draper. 

“ Presently I will. But I am not in the right mood just 
this moment. Let me tell you first how I came by my pres- 
ent mood. Don’t mistake me : lam not possessed by the 
idea — I am only trying to understand its nature, and set a 
trap fit to catch it, if it should creep into my inner premises, 
and from an idea swell to a seeming fact. — Well, I had a 
strange kind of a vision last night — no, not a vision — yes, a 
kind of vision — anyhow a very strange experience. I don’t 
know whether the draught the doctor gave me — I wish I 
had poor Faber back — this fellow is fitter to doctor oxen 
and mules than men ! — I don’t know whether the draught 
had any thing to do with it — I thought I tasted something 
sleepy in it — anyhow, thought is thought, and truth is truth, 
whatever drug, no less than whatever joy or sorrow, may 


350 


PAUL FABER. 


have been midwife to it. The first I remember of the men- 
tal experience, whatever it may have to be called, is, that I 
was coming awake — returning to myself after some period 
wherein consciousness had been quiescent. Of place, or 
time, or circumstance, I knew nothing. I was only growing 
aware of being. I speculated upon nothing. I did not even 
say to myself, ‘ I was dead, and now I am coming alive.’ I 
only felt. And I had but one feeling — and that feeling was 
love — the outgoing of a longing heart toward — I could not 
tell what ; — toward — I can not describe the feeling — toward 
the only existence there was, and that was every .thing ; — 
toward pure being, not as an abstraction, but as the, one 
actual fact, whence the world, men, and me — a something I 
knew only by being myself an existence. It was more me 
than myself ; yet it was not me, or I could not have loved 
it. I never thought me myself by myself ; my very exist- 
ence was the consciousness of this absolute existence in and 
through and around me : it made my heart burn, and the 
burning of my heart was my life — and the burning was the 
presence of the Absolute. If you can imagine a growing 
fruit, all blind and deaf, yet loving the tree it could neither 
look upon nor hear, knowing it only through the unbroken 
arrival of its life therefrom — that is something like what I 
felt. I suspect the form of the feeling was supplied by a 
shadowy memory of the time before I was born, while yet 
my life grew upon the life of my mother. 

“ By degrees came a change. What seemed the fire in 
me, burned and burned until it began to grow light ; in 
which light I began to remember things I had read and 
known about Jesus Christ and His Father and my Father. 
And with those memories the love grew and grew, till I 
could hardly bear the glory of God and His Christ, it made 
me love so intensely. Then the light seemed to begin to 
pass out beyond me somehow, and therewith I remembered 
the words of the Lord, ‘ Let your light so shine before men,’ 
only I was not letting it shine, for while I loved like that, I 
could no more keep it from shining than I could the sun. 
The next thing was, that I began to think of one I had 
loved, then of another and another and another — then of 
all together whom ever I had loved, one after another, then 
all together. And the light that went out from me was as 
a nimbus infolding every one in the speechlessness of my 
love. But lo ! then, the light staid not there, but, leaving 
them not, went on beyond them, reaching and infolding 


PAUL FABER. 


35 ^ 


every one of those also, whom, after the manner of men, I 
had on earth merely known and not loved. And therewith 
I knew that, for all the rest of the creation of God, I needed 
but the hearing of the ears or the seeing of the eyes to love 
each and every one, in his and her degree ; whereupon such 
a perfection of bliss awoke in me, that it seemed as if the 
fire of the divine sacrifice had at length seized upon my 
soul, and I was dying of absolute glory — which is love and 
love only. I had all things, yea the All. I was full and 
unutterably, immeasurably content. Yet still the light went 
flowing out and out from me, and love was life and life was 
light and light was love. On and on it flowed, until at last 
it grew eyes to me, and I could see. Lo ! before me was 
the multitude of the brothers and sisters whom I loved — 
individually — a many, many — not a mass ; — I loved every 
individual with that special, peculiar kind of love which 
alone belonged to that one, and to that one alone. The 
sight dazzled the eyes which love itself had opened. I said 
to myself, ‘ Ah, how radiant, how lovely, how divine they 
are ! and they are mine, every one — the many, for I love 
them ! ’ 

“ Then suddenly came a whisper — not to my ear — I 
heard it far away, but whether in some distant cave of 
thought, away beyond the flaming walls of the universe, or 
in some forgotten dungeon-corner of my own heart, I could 
not tell. ‘ O man,’ it said, ‘ what a being, what a life is thine ! 
See all these souls, these fires of life, regarding and loving 
thee ! It is in the glory of thy love their faces shine. Their 
hearts receive it, and send it back in joy. Seest thou 
not all their eyes fixed upon thine ? Seest thou not 
the light come and go upon their faces, as the pulses of thy 
heart flow and ebb ? See, now they flash, and now they 
fade ! Blessed art thou, O man, as none else in the universe 
of God is blessed ! ’ 

“ It was, or seemed, only a voice. But therewith, horri- 
ble to tell, the glow of another fire arose in me — an orange 
and red fire, and it went out from me, and withered all the 
faces, and the next moment there was darkness — all was black 
as night. But my being was still awake — only if then there 
was bliss, now was there the absolute blackness of darkness, 
the positive negation of bliss, the recoil of self to devour 
itself, and forever. The consciousness of being was in- 
tense, but in all the universe was there nothing to enter 
that being, and make it other than an absolute loneliness. 


352 


PAUL FABER. 


It was, and forever, a loveless, careless, hopeless monotony 
of self-knowing — a hell with but one demon, and no fire to 
make it cry ; my self was the hell, my known self the demon 
of it — a hell of which I could not find the walls, cold and 
dark and empty, and I longed for a flame that I might 
know there was a God. Somehow I only remembered God 
as a word, however ; I knew nothing of my whence or 
whither. One time there might have been a God, but there 
was none now : if there ever was one. He must be dead. 
Certainly there was no God to love — for if there was a God, 
how could the creature whose very essence was to him an 
evil, love the Creator of him ? I had the word love^ and I 
could reason about it in my mind, but I could not call up 
the memory of what the feeling of it was like. The black- 
ness grew and grew. I hated life fiercely. I hated the 
very possibility of a God who had created me a blot, a black- 
ness. With that I felt blackness begin to go out from me, 
as the light had gone before — not that I remembered the 
light ; I had forgotten all about it, and remembered it only 
after I awoke. Then came the words of the Lord to me : 

^ If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great 
is that darkness ! ’ And I knew what was coming : oh, 
horror ! in a moment more I should see the faces of those I 
had once loved, dark with the blackness that went out 
from my very existence ; then I should hate them, and my 
being would then be a hell to which the hell I now was 
would be a heaven ! There was just grace enough left in 
me for the hideousness of the terror to wake me. I was 
cold as if I had been dipped in a well. But oh, how I thanked 
God that I was what I am, and might yet hope after what I 
may be ! ” 

The minister’s face was pale as the horse that grew gray 
when Death mounted him ; and his eyes shone with a fever- 
ous brilliancy. The draper breathed a deep breath, and 
rubbed his white forehead. The minister rose and began 
again to pace the room. Drew would have taken his 
departure, but feared leaving him in such a state. He 
bethought himself of something that might help to calm 
him, and took out his pocket-book. The minister’s dream 
had moved him deeply, but he restrained himself all he 
could from manifesting his emotion. 

“Your vision,” he said, “ reminds me of some verses of 
Mr. Wingfold’s, of which Mrs. Wingfold very kindly let me 
take a copy. I have them here in my pocket-book ; may 
I read them to you ? ” 


PAUL FABER. 


353 


• The minister gave rather a listless consent, but that was 
enough for Mr. Drew’s object, and he read the following 
poem. 

SHALL THE DEAD PRAISE THEE? 

I can not praise Thee. By his instrument 
The organ-master sits, nor moves a hand ; 

For see the organ pipes o’erthrown and bent, 

Twisted and broke, like corn-stalks tempest-fanned ! 


I well could praise Thee for a flower, a dove ; 

But not for life that is not life in me ; 

Not for a being that is less than love — 

A barren shoal half-lifted from a sea. 


And for the land whence no wind bloweth ships. 

And all my living dead ones thither blown — 

Rather I’d kiss no more their precious lips, 

Than carry them a heart so poor and prcme. 

Yet I do bless Thee Thou art what Thou art. 

That Thou dost knovv Thyself what Thou dost know — 
A perfect, simple, tender, rhythmic heart. 

Beating Thy blood to all in bounteous flow. 


And I can bless Thee too for every smart. 

For every disappointment, ache, and fear ; 
For every hook Thou fixest in my heart. 

For every burning cord that draws me near. 


But prayer these wake, not song. Thyself I crave. 

Come Thou, or all Thy gifts away I fling. 

Thou silent, I am but an empty grave ; 

Think to me, Father, and I am a king. 

Then, like the wind-stirred bones, my pipes shall quake, 

The air burst, as from burning house the blaze ; 

And swift contending harmonies shall shake 
Thy windows with a storm of jubilant praise. 

Thee praised, I haste me humble to my own — 

Then love not shame shall bow me at their feet, 

Then first and only to my stature grown. 

Fulfilled of love, a servant all-complete. 

At first the minister seemed scarcely to listen, as he sat 
with closed eyes and knitted brows, but gradually the 
wrinkles disappeared like ripples, an expression of repose 


354 


PAUL FABER. 


supervened, and when the draper lifted his eyes at the close 
of his reading, there was a smile of quiet satisfaction on the 
now aged-looking countenance. As he did not open his 
eyes. Drew crept softly from the room, saying to Dorothy 
as he left the house, that she must get him to bed as soon as 
possible. She went to him, and now found no difficulty in 
persuading him. But something, she could not tell what, 
in his appearance, alarmed her, and she sent for the doctor. 
He was not at home, and had expected to be out all night. 
She sat by his bedside for hours, but at last, as he was 
quietly asleep, ventured to lay herself on a couch in the 
room. There she too fell fast asleep, and slept till morning, 
undisturbed. 

When she went to his bedside, she found him breathing 
softly, and thought him still asleep. But he opened his 
eyes, looked at her for a moment fixedly, and then said : 

“ Dorothy, child of my heart ! things may be very dif- 
ferent from what we have been taught, or what we may of 
ourselves desire ; but every difference will be the step of 
an ascending stair — each nearer and nearer to the divine 
perfection which alone can satisfy the children of a God, 
alone supply the poorest of their cravings.” 

She stooped and kissed his hand, then hastened to get 
him some food. 

When she returned, he was gone up the stair of her future, 
leaving behind him, like a last message that all was well, the 
loveliest smile frozen upon a face of peace. The past had 
laid hold upon his body ; he was free in the Eternal. Dor- 
othy was left standing at the top of the stair of the present. 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

EMPTY HOUSES. 

The desolation that seized on Dorothy seemed at first 
overwhelming. There was no refuge for her. The child’s 
tears, questions, and outbreaks of merriment were but a 
trouble to her. Even Wingfold and Helen could do little 
for her. Sorrow was her sole companion, her sole comfort 
for a time against the dreariness of life. Then came some- 


PAUL FABER. 


355 

thing better. As her father's form receded from her, his 
spirit drew nigh. I mean no phantom out of Hades — no 
consciousness of local presence : such things may be — I 
think sometimes they are ; but I would rather know my friend 
better through his death, than only be aware of his pres- 
ence about me ; that will one day follow — how much the 
more precious that the absence will have doubled its revela- 
tions, its nearness ! To Dorothy her father’s character, 
especially as developed in his later struggles after right- 
eousness — the root-righteousness of God, opened itself up 
day by day. She saw him combating his faults, dejected 
by his failures, encouraged by his successes ; and he grew 
to her the dearer for his faults, as she perceived more 
plainly how little he had sided, how hard he had fought 
with them. The very imperfections he repudiated gath- 
ered him honor in the eyes of her love, sowed seeds of per- 
ennial tenderness in her heart. She saw how, in those last 
days, he had been overcoming the world with accelerated 
victory, and growing more and more of the real father that 
no man can be until he has attained to the sonship. The 
marvel is that our children are so tender and so trusting to 
the slow developing father in us. The truth and faith 
which the great Father has put in the heart of the child, 
makes him the nursing father of the fatherhood in his father ; 
and thus in part it is, that the children of men will come at 
last to know the great Father. The family, with all its 
powers for the development of society, is a family because 
it is born and rooted in, and grows out of the very bosom of 
God. Gabriel told Zacharias that his son John, to make 
ready a people prepared for the Lord, should turn the 
hearts of the fathers to the children. 

Few griefs can be so paralyzing as, for a time, that of a 
true daughter upon the departure, which at first she feels as 
the loss, of a true parent ; but through the rifts of such 
heartbreaks the light of love shines clearer, and where love 
is, there is eternity : one day He who is the Householder of 
the universe, will begin to bring out of its treasury all the 
good old things, as well as the better new ones. How true 
must be the bliss up to which the intense realities of such 
sorrows are needful to force the way for the faithless heart 
and feeble will ! Lord, like Thy people of old, we need yet 
the background of the thunder-cloud against which to 
behold Thee ; but one day the only darkness around Thy 
dwelling will be the too much of Thy brightness. For Thou 


PAUL FACER. 


356 

art the perfection which every heart sighs toward, no mind 
can attain unto. If Thou wast One whom created mind could 
embrace, Thou wouldst be too small for those whom Thou 
hast made in Thine own image, the infinite creatures that 
seek their God, a Being to love and know infinitely. For 
the created to know perfectly would be to be damned 
forever in the nutshell of the finite. He who is His own 
cause, alone can understand perfectly and remain infinite, 
for that which is known and that which knows are in Him 
the same infinitude. 

Faber came to see Dorothy — solemn, sad, kind. He made 
no attempt at condolence, did not speak a word of comfort ; 
but he talked of the old man, revealing for him a deep 
respect ; and her heart was touched, and turned itself 
toward him. Some change, she thought, must have passed 
upon him. Her father had told her nothing of his relation 
to Amanda. It would have to be done some day, but he 
shrunk from it. She could not help suspecting there was 
more between Faber and him than she had at first imagined ; 
but there was in her a healthy contentment with ignorance, 
and she asked no questions. Neither did Faber make any 
attempt to find out whether she knew what had passed ; 
even about Amanda and any possible change in her future 
he was listless. He had never been a man of plans, and 
had no room for any now under the rubbish of a collapsed 
life. His days were gloomy and his nights troubled. He 
dreamed constantly either of Amanda’s mother, or of Juliet 
— sometimes of both together, and of endless perplexity 
between them. Sometimes he woke weeping. He did not 
now despise his tears, for they flowed neither from suffering 
nor self-pity, but from love and sorrow and repentance. A 
question of the possibility of his wife’s being yet alive would 
occasionally occur to him, but he always cast the thought 
from him as a folly in which he dared not indulge lest 
it should grow upon him and unman him altogether. 
Better she were dead than suffering what his cruelty 
might have driven her to : he had weakened her self- 
respect by insult, and then driven her out helpless. 

People said he took the loss of his wife coolly ; but the 
fact was that, in every quiet way, he had been doing all man 
could do to obtain what information concerning her there 
might possibly be to be had. Naturally he would have his 
proceedings as little as possible in the public mouth ; and 
to employ the police or the newspapers in such a quest was 


PAUL FABER. 


357 


too horrible. But he had made inquiries in all directions. 
He had put a question or two to Polwarth, but at that time 
he knew nothing of her, and did not feel bound to disclose 
his suspicions. Not knowing to what it might not expose 
her, he would not betray the refuge of a woman with a 
woman. Faber learned what every body had learned, and 
for a time was haunted by the horrible expectation of further 
news from the lake. Every knock at the door made him start 
and turn pale. But the body had not floated, and would 
not now. 

We have seen that, in the light thrown upon her fault 
from the revived memory of his own, a reaction had set in : 
the tide of it grew fiercer as it ran. He had deposed her 
idol — the God who she believed could pardon, and the bare 
belief in whom certainly could comfort her ; he had taken 
the place with her of that imaginary, yet, for some, necessary 
being ; but when, in, the agony of repentant shame, she 
looked to him for the pardon he alone could give her, he 
had turned from her with loathing, contempt, and insult ! 
He was the one in the whole earth, who, by saying to her Let 
it be forgotten^ could have lifted her into life and hope ! She had 
trusted in him, and he, an idol indeed, had crumbled in the 
clinging arms of her faith ! Had she not confessed to him 
what else he would never have known, humbling herself in a 
very ecstasy of repentance ? Was it not an honor to any 
husband to have been so trusted by his wife ? And had he 
not from very scorn refused to strike her ! Was she not a 
woman still ? a being before whom a man, when he can no 
longer worship, must weep ? Could any fault, ten times 
worse than she had committed, make her that she was no 
woman ? that he, merely as a man, owed her nothing ? Her 
fault was grievous ; it stung him to the soul : what then was 
it not to her ? Not now for his own shame merely,, or the 
most, did he lament it, but for the pity of it, that the lovely 
creature should not be clean, had not deserved his adoration ; 
that she was not the ideal woman ; that a glory had vanished 
from the earth ; that she he had loved was not in herself 
worthy. What then must be her sadness ! And this was 
his — the man’s — response to her agony, this his balm for 
her woe, his chivalry, his manhood — to dash her from him, 
and do his potent part to fix forever upon her the stain 
which he bemoaned ! Stained ? Why then did he not open 
his arms wide and take her, poor sad stain and all, to the 
bosom of a love which, by the very agony of its own grief 


PAUL FABER. 


358 

and its pity over hers, would have burned her clean ? What 
did it matter for him ? What was he ? What was his honor ? 
Had he had any, what fitter use for honor than to sacrifice 
it for the redemption of a wife ? That would be to honor 
honor. But he had none. There was not a stone on the 
face of the earth that would consent to be thrown at her by 
him ! 

Ah men ! men ! gentlemen ! was there ever such a poor 
sneaking scarecrow of an idol as that gaping straw-stuffed 
inanity you worship, and call honor ? It is not Honor ; it 
is hM\,your honor. It is neither gold, nor silver, nor honest 
copper, but a vile, worthless pinchbeck. It may be, however, 
for I have not the honor to belong to any of your clubs, 
that you no longer insult the word by using it at all. It 
may be you have deposed it, and enthroned another word 
of less significance to you still. But what the recognized 
slang of the day may be is nothing — therefore unnecessary 
to what I have to say — which is, that the man is a wretched 
ape who will utter a word about a woman’s virtue, when in 
himself, soul and body, there is not a clean spot ; when his 
body nothing but the furnace of the grave, his soul nothing 
but the eternal fire can purify. For him is many a harlot 
far too good : she is yet capable of devotion ; she would, 
like her sisters of old, recognize the Holy if she saw Him, 
while he would pass by his Maker with a rude stare, or the 
dullness of the brute which he has so assiduously cultivated 
in him. 

By degrees Faber grew thoroughly disgusted with him- 
self, then heartily ashamed. Were it possible for me to 
give every finest shade and gradation of the change he 
underwent, there would be still an unrepresented mystery 
which I had not compassed. But were my analysis correct 
as fact itself, and my showing of it as exact as words could 
make it, never a man on whom some such change had not at 
least begun to pass, would find in it any revelation. He 
ceased altogether to vaunt his denials, not that now he had 
discarded them, but simply because he no longer delighted 
in them. They were not interesting to him any more. He 
grew yet paler and thinner. He ate little and slept ill — and 
the waking hours of the night were hours of torture. He 
was out of health, and he knew it, but that did not comfort 
him. It was wrong and its misery that had made him ill, 
not illness that had made him miserable. Was he a weak- 
ling, a fool not to let the past be the past ? Things with- 


PAUL FABER. 


359 


out all remedy should be without regard : what’s done is 
done.” But not every strong man who has buried his 
murdered in his own garden, and set up no stone over them, 
can forget where they lie. It needs something that is not 
strength to be capable of that. The dead alone can bury 
their dead so ; and there is a bemoaning that may help to 
raise the dead. But sometimes such dead come alive un- 
bemoaned. Oblivion is not a tomb strong enough to keep 
them down. The time may come when a man will find his 
past but a cenotaph, and its dead all walking and making 
his present night hideous. And when such dead walk so, 
it is a poor chance they do not turn out vampires. 

When she had buried her dead out of her sight, Dorothy 
sought solitude and the things unseen more than ever. 
The Wingfolds were like swallows about her, never folding 
their wings of ministry, but not haunting her with bodily 
visitation. She never refused to see them, but they under- 
stood : the hour was not yet when their presence would be 
a comfort to her. The only comfort the heart can take must 
come — not from, but through itself. Day after day she 
would go into the park, avoiding the lodge, and there brood 
on the memories of her father and his late words. And ere 
long she began to feel nearer to him than she had ever felt 
while he was with her. For, where the outward sign has 
been understood, the withdrawing of it will bring the 
inward fact yet nearer. When our Lord said the spirit of 
Himself would come to them after He was gone. He but 
promised the working of one of the laws of His Father’s 
kingdom : it was about to operate in loftiest grade. 

Most people find the first of a bereavement more tolerable 
than what follows. They find in its fever a support. When 
the wound in the earth is closed, and the wave of life has 
again rushed over it, when things have returned to their 
wonted, now desiccated show, then the very Sahara of deso- 
lation opens around them, and for a time existence seems 
almost insupportable. With Dorothy it was different. 
Alive in herself, she was hungering and thirsting after life, 
therefore death could not have dominion over her. 

To her surprise she found also — she could not tell how 
the illumination had come — she wondered even how it should 
ever have been absent — that, since her father’s death, many 
of her difficulties had vanished. Some of them, remember- 
ing there had been such, she could hardly recall sufficiently 
to recognize them. She had been lifted into a region above 


360 


PAUL FABER. 


that wherein moved the questions which had then disturbed 
her peace. From a point of clear vision, she saw the things 
themselves so different, that those questions were no longer 
relevant. The things themselves misconceived, naturally 
no satisfaction can be got from meditation upon them, or 
from answers sought to the questions they suggest. If it be 
objected that she had no better ground for believing than 
before, I answer that, if a man should be drawing life from 
the heart of God, it could matter little though he were 
unable to give a satisfactory account of the mode of its 
derivation. That the man lives is enough. That another 
denies the existence of any such life save in the man’s self- 
fooled imagination, is nothing to the man who lives it. His 
business is not to raise the dead, but to live — not to convince 
the blind that there is such a faculty as sight, but to make 
good use of his eyes. He may not have an answer to any 
one objection raised by the adopted children of Science — 
their adopted mother raises none — to that which he believes ; 
but there is no more need that that should trouble him, 
than that a child should doubt his bliss at his mother’s 
breast, because he can not give the chemical composition of 
the milk he draws : that in the thing which is the root of the 
bliss, is rather beyond chemistry. Is a man not blessed in his 
honesty, being unable to reason of the first grounds of 
property ? If there be truth, that truth must be itself — must 
exercise its own blessing nature upon the soul which receives 
it in loyal understanding — that is, in obedience. A man may 
accept no end of things as facts which are not facts, and his 
mistakes will not hurt him. He may be unable to receive 
many facts as facts, and neither they nor his refusal of 
them will hurt him. He may not a whit the less be 
living in and by the truth. He may be quite unable to 
cmswer the doubts of another, but if, in the progress of his 
life, those doubts should present themselves to his own soul, 
then will he be able to meet them : he is in the region where 
all true answers are gathered. He maybe unable to receive 
this or that embodiment or form of truth, not having yet grown 
to its level ; but it is no matter so long as when he sees a 
truth he does it : to see and not do would at once place him 
in eternal danger. Hence a man of ordinary intellect and 
little imagination, may yet be so radiant in nobility as, to the 
true poet-heart, to be right worshipful. There is in the man 
who does the truth the radiance of life essential, eternal — a 
glory infinitely beyond any that can belong to the intellect, 


PAUL FABER. 


361 

beyond any that can ever come within its scope to be judjred 
proven, or denied by it. Through experiences doub^tful 
even to the soul m which they pass, the life may yet be 
flowing in. To know God is to be in the secret place of aU 
knowledge ; and to trust Him changes the atmosphere sur- 
rounding mystery and seeming contradiction, from one of 
pain and fear to one of hope : the unknown may be some 
lovely truth m store for us, which yet we are not good 
enough to apprehend. A man may dream all night that he 
IS awake, and when he does wake, be none the less sure that 
he IS awake in that he thought so all the night when he was 
not ; but he will find himself no more able to prove it than 
he would have been then, only able to talk better about it. 
i he differing consciousnesses of the two conditions can not 
produced in evidence, or embodied in forms of the under- 
standing. But my main point is this, that not to be intel- 
lectually certain of a truth, does not prevent the heart that 
loves and obeys that truth from getting its truth-good, from 
drawing life from its hoXy factness, present in the love of it. 
As yet Dorothy had no plans, except to carry out those 
lather, and, mainly for Juliet’s sake, to remove to the 
old house as soon as ever the work there was completed. 
But the repairs and alterations were of some extent, and took 
months. Nor was she desirous of shortening Juliet’s sojourn 
with the Polwarths : the longer that lasted with safety, the 
better for Juliet, and herself too, she thought. 

On Christmas eve, the curate gave his wife a little poem. 
Helen showed it to Dorothy, and Dorothy to Juliet. By this 
time she had had some genuine teaching — far more than 
she recognized as such, and the spiritual song was not alto- 
gether without influence upon her. Here it is ; 


THAT HOLY THING. 

They all were looking for a king 

To slay their foes, and lift them high : 

Thou cam’st a little baby thing 
That made a woman cry. 

O Son of Man, to right my lot 

Naught but Thy presence can avail ; 

Yet on the road Thy wheels are not, 

Nor on the sea Thy sail. 

My how or when Thou wilt not heed. 

But come down Thine own secret stair. 

That Thou mayst answer all my need. 
Yea, every by -gone prayer. 


CHAPTER L. 


FALLOW FIELDS. 

The spring was bursting in bud and leaf before the work- 
men were out of the Old House. The very next day, 
Dorothy commenced her removal. Every stick of the old 
furniture she carried with her ; every book of her father’s 
she placed on the shelves of the library he had designed. 
But she took care not to seem neglectful of Juliet, never 
failing to carry her the report of her husband as often as 
she saw him. It was to Juliet like an odor from Paradise 
making her weep, when Dorothy said that he looked sad — 

so different from his old self ! ” 

One day Dorothy ventured, hardly to hint, but to ap- 
proach a hint of mediation. Juliet rose indignant : no one, 
were he an angel from Heaven, should interfere between her 
husband and her ! If they could not come together without 
that, there should be a mediator, but not such as Dorothy 
meant ! 

“ No, Dorothy ! she resumed, after a rather prolonged 
silence ; “ the verj word mediation would imply a gulf be- 
tween us that could not be passed. But I have one petition 
to make to you, Dorothy. You will be with me in my 
trouble — won’t you ? ” 

“Certainly, Juliet — please God, I will.” 

“ Then promise me, if I can’t get through — if I am going 
to die, that you will bring him to me. I must see my Paul 
once again before the darkness.” 

“Wouldn’t that be rather unkind — rather selfish?” re^ 
turned Dorothy. 

She had been growing more and more pitiful of Paul. 

Juliet burst into tears, called Dorothy cruel, said she 
meant to kill her. How was she to face it but in the hope 
of death ? and how was she to face death but in the hope 
of seeing Paul once again for the last time ? She was certain 
she was going to die ; she knew it ! and if Dorothy would 
not promise, she was not going to wait for such a death ! 

“ But there will be a doctor,” said Dorothy, “ and how 
am 1 

Juliet interrupted her — not with tears but words of indig- 


PAUL FABER. 


363 

nation : Did Dorothy dare imagine she would allow any 
man but her Paul to come near her ? Did she ? Could she ? 
What did she think of her ? But of course she was preju- 
diced against her ! It was too cruel ! 

The moment she could get in a word, Dorothy begged 
her to say what she wished. 

“ You do not imagine, Juliet,” she said, “that I could 
take such a responsibility on myself ! ” 

“ I have thought it ail over,” answered Juliet. “There 
are women properly qualified, and you must find one. When 
she says I am dying, — when she gets frightened, you will 
send for my husband ? Promise me.” 

“ Juliet, I will,” answered Dorothy, and Juliet was satis- 
fied. 

But notwithstanding her behavior’s continuing so much 
the same, a change, undivined by herself as well as unsus- 
pected by her friend, had begun to pass upon Juliet. Every 
change must begin further back than the observation of man 
can reach — in regions, probably, of which we have no knowl- 
edge. To the eyes of his own wife, a man may seem in the 
gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, when “ larger, 
other eyes than ours ” may be watching with delight the 
germ of righteousness swell within the inclosing husk of 
evil. Sooner might the man of science detect the first mo- 
ment of actinic impact, and the simultaneously following 
change in the hitherto slumbering acorn, than the watcher 
of humanity make himself aware of the first movement of 
repentance. The influences now for some time operative 
upon her, were the more powerful that she neither sus- 
pected nor could avoid them. She had a vague notion that 
she was kind to her host and hostess ; that she was patron- 
izing them ; that her friend Dorothy, with whom she would 
afterwards arrange the matter, filled their hands for her 
use ; that, in fact, they derived benefit from her presence ; 
— and surely they did, although not as she supposed. The 
only benefits they reaped were invaluable ones — such as 
spring from love and righteousness and neighborhood. She 
little thought how she interfered with the simple pleasures 
and comforts of the two ; how many a visit of friends, whose 
talk was a holy revelry of thought and utterance, Polwarth 
warded, to avoid the least danger of her discovery ; how 
often fear for her shook the delicate frame of Ruth ; how 
often her host left some book unbought, that he might pro- 
cure instead some thing to tempt her to eat ; how often her 


3^4 


PAUL FABER. 


hostess turned faint in cooking for her. The crooked creat- 
ures pitied, as well they might, the lovely lady ; they be- 
lieved that Christ was in her ; that the deepest in her was 
the nature He had made — His own, and not that which she 
had gathered to herself — and thought her own. For the 
sake of the Christ hidden in her, her own deepest, best, 
purest self ; that she might be lifted from the dust-heap of 
the life she had for herself ruined, into the clear air of a pure 
will and the Divine Presence, they counted their best labor 
most fitly spent. It is the human we love in each other — 
and the human is the Christ. What we do not love is the 
devilish — no more the human than the morrow’s wormy mass 
was the manna of God. To be for the Christ in a man, is 
the highest love you can give him ; for in the unfolding 
alone of that Christ can the individuality, the genuine 
peculiarity of the man, the man himself, be perfected — the 
flower of his nature be developed, in its own distinct loveli- 
ness, beauty, splendor, and brought to its idea. 

The main channel through which the influences of the 
gnomes reached the princess, was their absolute simplicity. 
They spoke and acted what was in them. Through this 
open utterance, their daily, common righteousness revealed 
itself — their gentleness, their love of all things living, their 
care of each other, their acceptance as the will of God con- 
cerning them of whatever came, their general satisfaction 
with things as they were — though it must in regard to some 
of them have been in the hope that they would soon pass 
away, for one of the things Juliet least could fail to observe 
was their suffering patience. They always spoke as if they 
felt where their words were going — as if they were hearing 
them arrive — as if the mind they addressed were a bright 
silver table on which they must not set down even the cup 
of the water of life roughly : it must make no scratch, no 
jar, no sound beyond a faint sweet salutation. Pain had 
taught them not sensitiveness but delicacy. A hundred are 
sensitive for one that is delicate. Sensitiveness is a miser- 
able, a cheap thing in itself, but invaluable if it be used for 
the nurture of delicacy. They refused to receive offense, 
their care was to give none. The burning spot in the cen- 
ter of that distorted spine, which ought to have lifted Ruth 
up to a lovely woman, but had failed and sunk, and ever 
after ached bitterly as if with defeat, had made her pitiful 
over the pains of humanity : she could bear it, for there 
was something in her deeper than pain ; but alas for those 


PAUL FABER. 


365 

who were not thus upheld ! Her agony drove her to pray 
for the whole human race, exposed to like passion with her. 
The asthmatic choking which so often made Polwarth’s 
nights a long misery, taught him sympathy with all prison- 
ers and captives, chiefly with those bound in the bonds of 
an evil conscience : to such he held himself specially de- 
voted. They thought little of bearing pain : to know they 
had caused it would have been torture. Each, graciously 
uncomplaining, was tender over the ailing of the other. 

Juliet had not been long with them before she found the 
garments she had in her fancy made for them, did not fit 
them, and she had to devise afresh. They were not 
gnomes, kobolds, goblins, or dwarfs, but a prince and 
princess of sweet nobility, who had loved each other in 
beauty and strength, and knew that they were each crushed 
in the shell of a cruel and mendacious enchantment. How 
they served each other ! The uncle would just as readily 
help the niece with her saucepans, as the niece would help 
the uncle to find a passage in Shakespeare or a stanza in 
George Herbert. And to hear them talk ! 

For some time Juliet did not understand them, and did 
not try. She had not an idea what they were talking about. 
Then she began to imagine they must be weak in the brain 
— a thing not unlikely with such spines as theirs — and had 
silly secrets with each other, like children, which they 
enjoyed talking about chiefly because none could under- 
stand but themselves. Then she came to fancy it was 
herself and her affairs they were talking about, deliberating 
upon — in some mental if not lingual gibberish of their own. 
By and by it began to disclose itself to her, that the 
wretched creatures, to mask their misery from themselves, 
were actually playing at the kingdom of Heaven, speaking 
and judging and concluding of things of this world by 
quite other laws, other scales, other weights and measures 
than those in use in it. Every thing was turned topsy- 
turvy in this their game of make-believe. Their religion 
was their chief end and interest, and their work their play, 
as lightly followed as diligently. What she counted their 
fancies, they seemed to count their business ; their fancies 
ran over upon their labor, and made every day look and 
feel like a harvest-home, or the eve of a long-desired 
journey, for which every preparation but the last and light- 
est was over. Things in which she saw no significance 
made them look very grave, and what she would have 


366 


PAUL FABER. 


counted of some importance to such as they, drew a mere 
smile from them. She saw all with bewildered eyes, much 
as his neighbors looked upon the strange carriage of 
Lazarus, as represented by Robert Browning in the won- 
derful letter of the Arab physician. But after she had 
begun to take note of their sufferings, and come to mark 
their calm, their peace, their lighted eyes, their ready smiles, 
the patience of their very moans, she began to doubt 
whether somehow they might not be touched to finer issues 
than she. It was not, however, until after having, with no 
little reluctance and recoil, ministered to them upon an 
occasion in which both were disabled for some hours, that 
she began to feel they had a hold upon something unseen, 
the firmness of which hold made it hard to believe it closed 
upon an unreality. If there was nothing there, then these 
dwarfs, in the exercise of their foolish, diseased, distorted 
fancies, came nearer to the act of creation than any grand- 
est of poets ; for these their inventions did more than 
rectify for them the wrongs of their existence, not only 
making of their chaos a habitable cosmos, but of themselves 
heroic dwellers in the same. Within the charmed circle of 
this their well-being, their unceasing ministrations to her 
wants, their thoughtfulness about her likings and dislikings, 
their sweetness of address, and wistful watching to dis- 
cover the desire they might satisfy or the solace they could 
bring, seemed every moment enticing her. They soothed 
the aching of her wounds, mollified with ointment the 
stinging rents in her wronged humanity. 

At first, when she found they had no set prayers in the 
house, she concluded that, for all the talk of the old gnome 
in the garden, they were not very religious. But by and by 
she began to discover that no one could tell when they 
might not be praying. At the most unexpected times she 
would hear her host’s voice somewhere uttering tones of 
glad beseeching, of out-poured adoration. One day, when 
she had a bad headache, the little man came into her room, 
and, without a word to her, kneeled by her bedside, and 
said, Father, who through Thy Sonknowest pain, and Who 
dost even now in Thyself feel the pain of this Thy child, help 
her to endure until Thou shalt say it is enough, and send it 
from her. Let it not overmaster her patience ; let it not 
be too much for her. What good it shall work in her. Thou, 
Lord, needest not that we should instruct Thee.” There- 
with he rose, and left the room. 


PAUL FABER. 


367 

For some weeks after, she was jealous of latent design to 
bring their religion to bear upon her ; but perceiving not a 
single direct approach, not the most covert hint of attack, 
she became gradually convinced that they had no such 
intent. Polwarth was an absolute serpent of holy wisdom, 
and knew that upon certain conditions of the human being 
the only powerful influences of religion are the all but 
insensible ones. A man’s religion, he said, ought never to 
be held too near his neighbor. It was like violets : hidden 
in the banks, they fill the air with their scent ; but if a bunch 
of them is held to the nose, they stop away their own 
sweetness. 

Not unfrequently she heard one of them reading to the 
other, and by and by, came to join them occasionally. 
Sometimes it would be a passage of the New Testament, 
sometimes of Shakespeare, or of this or that old English 
book, of which, in her so-called education, Juliet had never 
even heard, but of which the gatekeeper knew every land- 
mark. He would often stop the reading to talk, explaining 
and illustrating what the writer meant, in a way that filled 
Juliet with wonder. ‘‘ Strange ! ” she would say to herself ; 
“ I never thought of that ! ” She did not suspect that 
it would have been strange indeed if she had thought 
of it. 

In her soul began to spring a respect for her host and 
hostess, such as she had never felt toward God or man. 
When, despite of many revulsions it was a little established, 
it naturally went beyond them in the direction of that which 
they revered. The momentary hush that preceded the 
name of our Lord, and the smile that so often came with it ; 
the halo, as it were, which in their feeling surrounded Him ; 
the confidence of closest understanding, the radiant humility 
with which they approached His idea ; the way in which they 
brought the commonest question side by side with the ideal 
of Him in their minds, considering the one in the. light of 
the other, and answering it thereby ; the way in which they 
took all He said and did on the fundam,ental understanding 
that His relation to God was perfect, but His relation to men 
as yet an imperfect, endeavoring relation, because of their 
distance from His Father ; these, with many another out- 
come of their genuine belief, began at length to make her 
feel, not merely as ^f there had been, but as if there really 
were such a person as Jesus Christ. The idea of Him ruled 
potent in the ^y^s. of the two, filling heart and brain and 


368 


PAUL FABER. 


hands and feet : how could she help a certain awe before it, 
such as she had never felt ! 

Suddenly one day the suspicion awoke in her mind, that 
the reason why they asked her no questions, put out no 
feelers after discovery concerning her, must be that Dorothy 
had told them every thing : if it was, never again would she 
utter word good or bad to one whose very kindness, she 
said to herself, was betrayal ! The first moment therefore 
she saw Polwarth alone, unable to be still an instant with 
her doubt unsolved, she asked him, “ with sick assay,” but 
point-blank, whether he knew why she was in hiding from 
her husband. 

“ I do not know, ma’am,” he answered. 

“ Miss Drake told you nothing ? ” pursued Juliet. 

Nothing more than I knew already : that she could not 
deny when I put it to her.” 

“ But how did you know any thing ? ” she almost cried 
out, in a sudden rush of terror as to what the public knowl- 
edge of her might after all be. 

“ If you will remember, ma’am,” Polwarth replied, “ I 
told you, the first time I had the pleasure of speaking to 
you, that it was by observing and reasoning upon what I 
observed, that I knew you were alive and at the Old House. 
But it may be some satisfaction to you to see how the thing 
took shape in my mind.” 

Thereupon he set the whole process plainly before her. 

Fresh wonder, mingled with no little fear, laid hold upon 
Juliet. She felt not merely as if he could look into her, 
but as if he had only to look into himself to discover all her 
secrets. 

“ I should not have imagined you a person to trouble him- 
self to that extent with other people’s affairs,” she said, 
turning away. 

“ So far as my service can reach, the things of others are 
also mine,” replied Polwarth, very gently. 

But you could not have had the smallest idea of serving 
me when you made all those observations concerning me.” 

‘‘ I had long desired to serve your husband, ma’am. Never 
from curiosity would I have asked a single question about 
you or your affairs. But what came to me I was at liberty 
to understand if I could, and use for lawful ends if I might.” 

Juliet was silent. She dared hardly think, lest the gnome 
should see her very thoughts in their own darkness. Yet 
she yielded to one more urgent^question that kept pushing 


PAUL FABER. 


369 

to get out. She tried to say the words without thinking of 
the thing, lest he should thereby learn it. 

“ I suppose then you have your own theory as to mv 
reasons for seeking shelter with Miss Drake for a while 
she said— and the moment she said it, felt as if some demon 
had betrayed her, and used her organs to utter the words. 

It 1 have, ma’am,” answered Polwarth, “ it is for myself 
alone. I know the sacredness of married life too well to 
speculate irreverently on its affairs. I believe that many an 
awtul crisis of human history is there passed — such I pre- 
sume, as God only sees and understands. The more care- 
tully such are kept from the common eye and the common 
judgment, the better, I think.” 

If Juliet left him with yet a little added fear, it was also 
with growing confidence, and some comfort, which the feeble 
presence of an infant humility served to enlarge. 

Polwarth had not given much thought to the question of 
their separation. That was not of his business. 
What he could not well avoid seeing was, that it could 
hardly have taken place since their marriage. He had at 
once, as a matter of course, concluded that it lay with the 
husband, but from what he had since learned of Juliet’s 
character, he knew she had not the strength either of moral 
opinion or of will to separate, for any reason past and gone, 
from the husband she loved so passionately ; and there he 
stopped, refusing to think further. For he found himself on 
the verge of thinking what, in his boundless respect for 
women, he shrank with deepest repugnance from entertain- 
ing even as a transient flash of conjecture. 

One trifle I will here mention, as admitting laterally a 
single ray of light upon Polwarth’s character. Juliet had 
come to feel some desire to be useful in the house beyond 
her own room, and descrying not only dust, but what she 
judged disorder in her landlord's little library — for such she 
chose to consider him — which, to her astonishment in such 
a mere cottage, consisted of many more books than her 
husband’s, and ten times as many readable ones, she offered 
to dust and rearrange them properly : Polwarth instantly 
accepted her offer, with thanks — which were solely for the 
kindness of the intent, he could not possibly be grateful for 
the intended result — and left his books at her mercy. I do 
not know another man who, loving his books like Polwarth, 
would have done so. Every book had its own place. He 
could— I speak advisedly— have laid his hand on any book 


370 


PAUL FABER. 


of at least three hundred of them, in the dark. While he used 
them with perfect freedom, and cared comparatively little 
about their covers, he handled them with a delicacy that 
looked almost like respect. He had seen ladies handle 
books, he said, laughing, to Wingfold, in a fashion that would 
have made him afraid to trust them with a child. It was a 
year after Juliet left the house before he got them by de- 
grees muddled into order again ; for it was only as he used 
them that he would alter their places, putting each, when he 
had done with it for the moment, as near where it had been 
before as he could ; thus, In time, out of a neat chaos, restor- 
ing a useful work-a-day world. 

Dorothy’s thoughts were in the meantime much occupied 
for Juliet. Now that she was so sadly free, she could do 
more for her. She must occupy her old quarters as soon 
as possible after the workmen had finished. She thought 
at first of giving out that a friend in poor health was coming 
to visit her, but she soon saw that would either involve 
lying or lead to suspicion, and perhaps discovery, and resolved 
to keep her presence in the house concealed from the outer 
world as before. But what was she to do with respect to 
Lisbeth ? Could she trust her with the secret ? She certainly 
could not trust Amanda. She would ask Helen to take the 
latter for a while, and do her best to secure the silence of 
the former. 

She so represented the matter to Lisbeth as to rouse her 
heart in regard to it even more than her wonder. But her 
injunctions to secrecy were so earnest, that the old woman 
was offended. She was no slip of a girl, she said, who did 
not know how to hold her tongue. She had had secrets to 
keep before now, she said ; and in proof of her perfect 
trustworthiness, was proceeding to tell some of them, when 
she read her folly in Dorothy’s fixed regard, and ceased. 

Lisbeth,” said her mistress, “ you have been a friend for 
sixteen years, and I love you ; but if I find that you have 
given the smallest hint even that there is a secret in the 
house, I solemnly vow you shall not be another night in it 
yourself, and I shall ever after think of you as a wretched 
creature who periled the life of a poor, unhappy lady rather 
than take the trouble to rule her own tongue.” 

Lisbeth trembled, and did hold her tongue, in spite of 
the temptation to feel herself for just one instant the most 
important person in Glaston. 

As the time went on, Juliet became more fretful, and more 


PAUL FABER. 


371 


confiding. She was never cross with Ruth — why, she could 
not have told ; and when she had been cross to Dorothy, 
she was sorry for it. She never said she was sorry, but she 
tried to make up for it. Her husband had not taught her the 
virtue, both for relief and purification, that lies in the 
ackjiowledgment of wrong. To take up blame that is our own, 
is to wither the very root of it. 

Juliet was pleased at the near prospect of the change, for 
she had naturally dreaded being ill in the limited accommoda- 
tion of the lodge. She formally thanked the two crushed 
and rumpled little angels, begged them to visit her often, 
and proceeded to make her very small preparations with a 
fitful cheerfulness. Something might come of the change, 
she flattered herself. She had always indulged a vague 
fancy that Dorothy was devising help for her ; and it was in 
part the disappointment of nothing having yet justified the 
expectation, that had spoiled her behavior to her. But for 
a long time Dorothy had been talking of Paul in a different 
tone, and that very morning had spoken of him even with 
some admiration : it might be a prelude to something ! Most 
likely Dorothy knew more than she chose to say ! She dared 
ask no question for the dread of finding herself mistaken. 
She preferred the ignorance that left room for hope. But 
she did not like all Dorothy said in his praise ; for her tone, 
if not her words, seemed to imply some kind of change in 
him. He might have his faults, she said to herself, like 
other men, but she had not yet discovered them ; and any 
change would, in her eyes, be for the worse. Would she 
ever see her own old Paul again ? 

One day as Faber was riding at a good round trot along 
one of the back streets of Glaston, approaching his own 
house, he saw Amanda, who still took every opportunity of 
darting out at an open door, running to him with out- 
stretched arms, right in the face of Niger, just as if she ex- 
pected the horse to stop and take her up. Unable to trust 
him so well as his dear old Ruber, he dismounted, and tak- 
ing her in his arms, led Niger to his stable. He learned 
from her that she was staying with the Wingfolds, and took 
her home, after which his visits to the rectory were frequent. 

The Wingfolds could not fail to remark the tenderness 
with which he regarded the child. Indeed it soon became 
clear that it was for her sake he came to them. The change 
that had begun in him, the loss of his self-regard following 
on the loss of Juliet, had left a great gap in his conscious 


372 


PAUL FABER. 


being : into that gap had instantly begun to shoot the all- 
clothing greenery of natural affection. His devotion to her 
did not at first cause them any wonderment. Every body 
loved the little Amanda, they saw in him only another of 
the child’s conquests, and rejoiced in the good the love 
might do him. Even when they saw him looking fixedly 
at her with eyes over clear, they set it down to the frustrated 
affection of the lonely, wifeless, childless man. But by de- 
grees they did come to wonder a little : his love seemed to 
grow almost a passion. Strange thoughts began to move in 
their minds, looking from the one to the other of this love 
and the late tragedy. 

“ I wish,” said the curate one morning, as they sat at 
breakfast, ‘‘ if only for Faber’s sake, that something definite 
was known about poor Juliet. There are rumors in the 
town, roving like poisonous fogs. Some profess to believe 
he has murdered her, getting rid of her body utterly, then 
spreading the report that she had run away. Others say 
she is mad, and he has her in the house, but stupefied with 
drugs to keep her quiet. Drew told me he had even heard 
it darkly hinted that he was making experiments upon her, 
to discover the nature of life. It is dreadful to think what 
a man is exposed to from evil imaginations groping after 
theory. I dare hardly think what might happen should 
these fancies get rooted among the people. Many of them 
are capable of brutality. For my part, I don’t believe the 
poor woman is dead yet.” 

Helen replied she did not believe that, in her sound mind, 
Juliet would have had the resolution to kill herself ; but 
who could tell what state of mind she was in at the time ? 
There was always something mysterious about her — some- 
thing that seemed to want explanation. 

Between them it was concluded that, the next time Faber 
came. Wingfold should be plain with him. He therefore 
told him that if he could cast any light on his wife’s disap- 
pearance, it was most desirable he should do so ; for reports 
were abroad greatly to his disadvantage. Faber answered, 
with a sickly smile of something like contempt, that they 
had had a quarrel the night before, for which he was to 
blame ; that he had left her, and the next morning she was 
gone, leaving every thing, even to her wedding-ring, behind 
her, except the clothes she wore ; that he had done all he 
could to find her, but had been utterly foiled. More he 
could not say. 


PAUL FABER. 


373 


The next afternoon, he sought an interview with the 
curate in his study, and told him every thing he had told 
Mr. Drake. The story seemed to explain a good deal more 
than it did, leaving the curate with the conviction that the 
disclosure of this former relation had caused the quarrel 
between him and his wife, and more doubtful than ever as 
to Juliet’s having committed suicide. 


CHAPTER LI. 

THE NEW OLD HOUSE. 

It was a lovely moon-lighted midnight when they set out, 
the four of them, to walk from the gate across the park to the 
Old House. Like shadows they flitted over the green 
sward, all silent as shadows. Scarcely a word was spoken 
as they went, and the stray syllable now and then, was 
uttered softly as in the presence of the dead. Suddenly but 
gently opened in Juliet’s mind a sense of the wonder of 
life. The moon, having labored through a heap of cloud 
into a lake of blue, seemed to watch her with curious interest 
as she toiled over the level sward. The air now and then 
made a soundless sigh about her head, like a waft of wings 
invisible. The heavenly distances seemed to have come 
down and closed her softly in. All at once, as if waked from 
an eternity of unconsciousness, she found herself, by no will 
of her own, with no power to say nay, present to herself — a 
target for sorrow to shoot at, a tree for the joy-birds to light 
upon and depart — a woman, scorned of the man she loved, 
bearing within her another life, which by no will of its own, 
and with no power to say nay, must soon become aware of its 
own joys and sorrows, and have no cause to bless her for her 
share in its being. Was there no one to answer for it ? 
Surely there must be a heart-life somewhere in the universe, 
to whose will the un-self-willed life could refer for the justifi- 
cation of its existence, for its motive, for the idea of it that 
should make it seem right to itself — to whom it could cry to 
have its divergence from that idea rectified ! Was she not 
now, she thought, upon her silent way to her own death- 
bed, walking, walking, the phantom of herself, in her own 


374 


PAUL FABER. 


funeral ? What if, when the bitterness of death was past, 
and her child was waking in this world, she should be wak- 
ing in another, to a new life, inevitable as the former — 
another, yet the same ? We know not whence we came — 
why may we not be going whither we know not? We did 
not know we were coming here, why may we not be going 
there without knowing it — this much more open-eyed, more 
aware that we know we do not know ? That terrible morn- 
ing, she had come this way, rushing swiftly to her death : 
she was caught and dragged back from Hades, to be there- 
after — now, driven slowly toward it, like an ox to the 
slaughter ! She could not avoid her doom — she must en- 
counter that which lay before her. That she shrunk from 
it with fainting terror was nothing ; on she must go ! What 
an iron net, what a combination of all chains and manacles 
and fetters and iron-masks and cages and prisons was this 
existence — at least to a woman, on whom was laid the 
burden of the generations to follow ! In the lore of cen- 
turies was there no spell whereby to be rid of it ? no dark 
saying that taught how to make sure death should be death, 
and not a fresh waking? That the future is unknown, 
assures only danger ! New circumstances have seldom to 
the old heart proved better than the new piece of cloth to 
the old garment. 

Thus meditated Juliet. She was beginning to learn that, 
until we get to the heart of life, its outsides will be forever 
fretting us ; that among the mere garments of life, we can 
never be at home. She was hard to teach, but God’s circum- 
stance had found her. 

When they came near the brow of the hollow, Dorothy 
ran on before, to see that all was safe. Lisbeth was of 
course the only one in the house. The descent was to Juliet 
like the going down to the gates of Death. 

Polwarth, who had been walking behind with Ruth, 
stepped to her side the moment Dorothy left her. Looking 
up in her face, with the moonlight full upon his large feat- 
ures, he said, 

“ I have been feeling all the way, ma’am, as if Another 
was walking beside us — the same who said, ‘ I am with you 
always even to the end of the world.’ He could not have 
meant that only for the few that were so soon to follow Him 
home ; He must have meant it for those also who should 
believe by their word. Becoming disciples, all promises the 
Master made to His disciples are theirs.” 


PAUL FABER. 375 

^ “ It matters little for poor me,” answered Juliet with a 
sigh. “ You know I do not believe in Him.” 

“ But I believe in Him,” answered Polwarth, “ and Ruth 
believes in Him, and so does Miss Drake ; and if He be with 
us, he can not be far from you.” 

With that he stepped back to Ruth’s side, and said no 
more. 

Dorothy opened the door quickly, the moment their feet 
were on the steps ; they entered quickly, and she closed it 
behind them at once, fearful of some eye in the night. How 
different was the house from that which Juliet had left ! 
The hall was lighted with a soft lamp, showing dull, warm 
colors on walls and floor. The dining-room door stood 
open ; a wood-fire was roaring on the hearth, afid candles 
were burning on a snowy table spread for a meal. Dorothy 
had a chamber-candle in her hand. She showed the Pol- 
warths into the dining-room, then turning to Juliet, said, 

“ I will take you to your room, dear.” 

“ I have prepared your old quarters for you,” she said, as 
they went up the stair. 

With the words there rushed upon Juliet such a memory 
of mingled dreariness and terror, that she could not reply. 

“ You know it will be safest,” added Dorothy, and as she 
spoke, set the candle on a table at the top of the stair. 

They went along the passage, and she opened the door 
of the closet. All was dark. 

She opened the door in the closet, and Juliet started back 
with amazement. It was the loveliest room ! and — like a 
marvel in a fairy-tale — the great round moon was shining 
gloriously, first through the upper branches of a large yew, 
and then through an oriel window, filled with lozenges of 
soft greenish glass, through which fell a lovely picture on 
the floor in light and shadow and something that was neither 
or both. Juliet turned in delight, threw her arms round 
Dorothy, and kissed her. 

“ I thought I was going into a dungeon,” she said, “ and 
it is a room for a princess ! ” 

“ I sometimes almost believe, Juliet,” returned Dorothy, 

that God will give us a great surprise one day.” 

Juliet was tired, and did not want to hear about God. If 
Dorothy had done all this, she thought, for the sake of 
reading her a good lesson, it spoiled it all. She did not 
understand the love that gives beyond the gift, that mantles 
over the cup and spills the wine into the spaces of eternal 


37<5 


PAUL FABER. 


hope. The room was so delicious that she begged to be 
excused from going down to supper. Dorothy suggested it 
would not be gracious to her friends. Much as she res- 
pected, and indeed loved them, Juliet resented the word 
friends^ but yielded. 

The little two would themselves rather have gone home 
— it was so late — but staid, fearing to disappoint Dorothy. 
If they did run a risk by doing so, it was for a good reason 
— therefore of no great consequence. 

How your good father will delight to watch you here 
sometimes. Miss Drake,” said Polwarth, “ if those who are 
gone are permitted to see, walking themselves unseen.” 

Juliet shuddered. Dorothy’s father not two months gone, 
and the dreadful little man to talk to her like that ! 

“ Do you then think,” said Dorothy, “ that the dead only 
seem to have gone from us ? ” and her eyes looked like 
store-houses of holy questions. 

“ I know so little,” he answered, ‘‘ that I dare hardly say 
I think any thing. But if, as our Lord implies, there be no 
such thing as that which the change appears to us — nothing 
like that we are thinking of when we call it deaths — may it 
not be that, obstinate as is the appearance of separation, 
there is, notwithstanding, none of it ? — I don’t care, mind : 
His will is^ and that is every thing. But there can be no 
harm, where I do not know His will, in venturing a may be. 
I am sure He likes His little ones to tell their fancies in the 
dimmits about the nursery fire. Our souls yearning after 
light of any sort must be a pleasure to him to watch. — But 
on the other hand, to resume the subject, it may be that, 
as it is good for us to miss them in the body that we may 
the better find them in the spirit, so it may be good for 
them also to miss our bodies that they may find our 
spirits.” 

“ But,” suggested Ruth, “ they had that kind of discipline 
while yet on earth, in the death of those who went before 
them ; and so another sort might be better for them now. 
Might it not be more of a discipline for them to see, in 
those left behind, how they themselves, from lack of faith, 
went groping about in the dark, while crowds all about 
them knew perfectly what they could not bring themselves 
to believe ? ” 

“ It might, Ruth, it might ; nor do I think any thing to 
the contrary. Or it might be given to some and not to 
others, just as it was good for them. It may be that some 


PAUL FABER. 


377 


can see some, or can see them sometimes, and watch their 
ways m partial glimpses of revelation. Who knows who 
rnay be about the house when all its mortals are dead for 
the night, and the last of the fires are burning unheeded ! 
There are so many hours of both day and night — in most 
houses— in which those in and those out of the body need 
never cross each others’ paths! And there are tales 
legends, reports, many mere fiction doubtless, but some 
possibly of a different character, which represent this and 
that doer of evil as compelled, either by the law of his or 
her own troubled being, or by some law external thereto, 
ever, or at fixed intervals, to haunt the moldering scenes 
of their past, and ever dream horribly afresh the deeds done 
in the body. These, however, tend to no proof of what we 
have been speaking about, for such ‘ extravagant and erring 
spirit ’ does not haunt the living from love, but the dead 
from suffering. In this life, however, few of us come really 
near to each other in the genuine simplicity of love, and 
that may be the reason why the credible stories of ’ love 
meeting love across the strange difference are so few. It 
is a wonderful touch, I always think, in the play of Hamlet, 
that, while the prince gazes on the spirit of his father, not- 
ing every expression and gesture — even his dress, as he 
passes through his late wife’s chamber, Gertrude, less un- 
faithful as widow than as wife, not only sees nothing, but 
by no sigh or hint, no sense in the air, no beat of her own 
heart, no creep even of her own flesh, divines his presence 
— is not only certain that she sees nothing, but that she 
sees all there is. She is the dead, not her husband. To the 
dead all are dead. The eternal life makes manifest both 
life and death.” 

“ Please, Mr. Polwarth,” said Juliet, “remember it is the 
middle of the night. No doubt it is just the suitable time, 
but I would rather not make one in an orgy of horrors. We 
have all to be alone presently.” 

She hated to hear about death, and the grandest of words. 
Eternal Life, which to most means nothing but prolonged 
existence, meant to her just death. If she had stolen a 
magic spell for avoiding it, she could not have shrunk more 
from any reference to the one thing commonest and most 
inevitable. Often as she tried to imagine the reflection of 
her own death in the mind of her Paul, the mere mention 
of the ugly thing seemed to her ill-mannered, almost in- 
decent. 


378 


PAUL FABER. 


The Lord is awake all night,” said Polwarth, rising, 
‘<and therefore the night is holy as the day.— Ruth, we 
should be rather frightened to walk home under that awful 
sky, if we thought the Lord was not with us.” 

“ The night is fine enough,” said Juliet. 

‘‘Yes,” said Ruth, replying to her uncle, not to Juliet; 
“ but even if He were asleep — you remember how He slept 
once, and yet reproached His disciples with their fear and 
doubt.” 

“ I do ; but in the little faith with which He reproached 
them. He referred, not to Himself, but to His Father. 
Whether He slept or waked it was all one : the Son may 
sleep, for the Father never sleeps.” 

They stood beside each other, taking their leave : what 
little objects they were, opposite the two graceful ladies, who 
also stood beside each other, pleasant to look upon. Sorrow 
and suffering, lack and weakness, though plain to see upon 
them both, had not yet greatly dimmed their beauty. The 
faces of the dwarfs, on the other hand, were marked and 
lined with suffering ; but the suffering was dominated by 
peace and strength. There was no sorrow there, little lack, 
no weakness or fear, and a great hope. They never spent 
any time in pitying themselves ; the trouble that alone ever 
clouded their sky, was the suffering of others. Even for 
this they had comfort — their constant ready help consoled 
both the sufferer and themselves. 

“ Will you come and see me, if you die first, uncle ? ” said 
Ruth, as they walked home together in the moonlight. 
“You will think how lonely I am without you.” 

“ If it be within the law of things, if I be at liberty, and 
the thing seem good for you, my Ruth, you may be sure I 
will come to you. But of one thing I am pretty certain, 
that such visions do not appear when people are looking for 
them. You must not go staring into the dark trying to see 
me. Do your work, pray your prayers, and be sure I love 
you : if I am to come, I will com*e. It may be in the 
hot noon or in the dark night : it may be with no sight and 
no sound, yet a knowledge of presence; or I may be watch- 
ing you, helping you perhaps and you never know it until 
I come to fetch you at the last, — if I may. You have been 
daughter and sister, and mother to me, my Ruth. You have 
been my one in the world. God, I think sometimes, has 
planted about you and me, my child, a cactus-hedge of 
uglinesi, that we might be so near and so lonely as to learn 


PAUL FABER. 


379 


love as few have learned it in this worla — love without fear, 
or doubt, or pain, or anxiety — with constant satisfaction in 
presence, and calm content in absence. Of the last, how- 
ever, I can not boast much, seeing we have not been parted 
a day for — how many years is it, Ruth ? — Ah, Ruth ! a bliss 
beyond speech is waiting us in the presence of the Master, 
where, seeing Him as He is, we shall grow like Him and be 
no more either dwarfed or sickly. But you will have the 
same face, Ruth, else I should be forever missing something.’* 

“ But you do not think we shall be perfect all at once ? ’* 

“ No, not all at once ; I can not believe that : God takes 
time to what He does — the doing of it is itself good. It 
would be a sight for heavenly eyes to see you, like a bent 
and broken and withered lily, straightening and lengthen- 
ing your stalk, and flushing into beauty. — But fancy what 
it will be to see at length to the very heart of the person 
you love, and love Him perfectly — and that you can love 
Him ! Every love will then be a separate heaven, and all 
the heavens will blend in one perfect heaven — the love of 
God — the All in all.” 

They were walking like children, hand in hand : Ruth 
pressed that of her uncle, for she could not answer in words. 

Even to Dorothy their talk would have been vague, vague 
from the intervening mist of her own atmosphere. To 
them it was vague only from the wide stretch of its horizon, 
the distance of its zenith. There is all difference between 
the vagueness belonging to an imperfect sight, and 
the vagueness belonging to the distance of the outlook. 
But to walk on up the hill of duty, is the only way out of the 
one into the other. I think some only know they are labor- 
ing, hardly know they are climbing, till they find themselves 
near the top. 


CHAPTER LII. 

THE LEVEL OF THE LYTHE. 

Dorothy’s faith in Polwarth had in the meantime largely 
increased. She had not only come to trust him thoroughly, 
but gained much strength from the confidence. As soon 
as she had taken Juliet her breakfast the next morning, she 


380 


PAUL FABER. 


went to meet him in the park, for so they had arranged the 
night before. 

She had before acquainted him with the promise Juliet 
had exacted from her, that she would call her husband the 
moment she seemed in danger — a possibility which Juliet 
regarded as a certainty ; and had begged him to think how 
they could contrive to have Faber within call. He had now 
a plan to propose with this object in view, but began, ap- 
parently, at a distance from it. 

“You know. Miss Drake,” he said, “that I am well 
acquainted with every yard of this ground. Had your hon- 
ored father asked me whether the Old House was desirable 
for a residence, I should have expressed considerable 
doubt. But there is one thing which would greatly improve 
it — would indeed, I hope, entirely remove my objection to 
it. Many years ago I noted the state of the stone steps 
leading up to the door : they were much and diversely out 
of the level ; and the cause was evident with the first great 
rain : the lake filled the whole garden — to the top of the 
second step. Now this, if it take place only once a year, 
must of course cause damp in the house. But I think there 
is more than that will account for. I have been in the 
cellars repeatedly, both before and since your father bought 
it ; and always found them too damp. The cause of it, I 
think, is, that the foundations are as low as the ordinary 
level of the water in the pond, and the ground at that 
depth is of large gravel : it seems to me that the water gets 
through to the house. I should propose, therefore, that 
from the bank of the Lythe a tunnel be commenced, rising 
at a gentle incline until it pierces the basin of the lake. 
The ground is your own to the river, I believe ? ” 

“ It is,” answered Dorothy. “ But I should be sorry to 
empty the lake altogether.” 

“ My scheme,” returned Polwarth, “ includes a strong 
sluice, by which you could keep the water at what height 
you pleased, and at any moment send it into the river. 
The only danger would be of cutting through the springs ; 
and I fancy they are less likely to be on the side next the 
river where the ground is softer, else they would probably 
have found their way directly into it, instead of first hol- 
lowing out the pond.” 

“ Would it be a difficult thing to do ? ” asked Dorothy. 

“ I think not,” answered Polwarth. “ But with your per- 
mission I will get a friend of mine, an engineer, to look into 
it.” 


PAUL FABER. 381 

“ I leave it in your hands,” said Dorothy. — “ Do you 
think we will find any thing at the bottom ? ” 

Who can tell ? But we do not know how near the bot- 
tom the tunnel may bring us ; there may be fathoms of 
mud below the level of the river-bed. — One thing, thank 
God, we shall not find there ! ” 

The same week all was arranged with the engineer. By 
a certain day his men were to be at work on the tunnel. 

For some time now, things had been going on much the 
same with all in whom my narrative is interested. There 
come lulls in every process, whether of growth or of tempest, 
whether of creation or destruction, and those lulls, coming 
as they do in the midst of force, are precious in their influ- 
ence — because they are only lulls, and the forces are still at 
work. All the time the volcano is quiet, something is going 
on below. From.the first moment of exhaustion, the next 
outbreak is preparing. To be faint is to begin to gather, as 
well as to cease to expend. 

Faber had been growing better. He sat more erect on 
his horse ; his eye was keener, his voice more kindly, 
though hardly less sad, and his step was firm. His love to 
the child, and her delight in his attentions, were slowly lead- 
ing him back to life. Every day, if but for a moment, he 
contrived to see her, and the Wingfolds took care to remove 
every obstacle from the way of their meeting. Little they 
thought why Dorothy let them keep the child so long. As 
little did Dorothy know that what she yielded for the sake 
of the wife, they desired for the sake of the husband. 

At length one morning came a break : Faber received a 
note from the gate-keeper, informing him that Miss Drake 
was having the pond at the foot of her garden emptied into 
the Lythe by means of a tunnel, the construction of which 
was already completed. They were now boring for a small 
charge of gunpowder expected to liberate the water. The 
process of emptying would probably be rapid, and he had 
taken the liberty of informing Mr. Faber, thinking he might 
choose to be present. No one but the persons employed 
would be allowed to enter the grounds. 

This news gave him a greater shock than he could have 
believed possible. He thought he had “ supped full of hor- 
rors ! ” At once he arranged with his assistant for being 
absent the whole day ; and rode out, followed by his groom. 
At the gate Polwarth joined him, and walked beside him to 
the Old House, where his groom, he said, could put up the 


382 


PAUL FABER. 


horses. That done, he accompanied him to the mouth of 
the tunnel, and there left him. 

Faber sat down on the stump of a felled tree, threw a big 
cloak, which he had brought across the pommel of his saddle, 
over his knees, and covered his face with his hands. Before 
him the river ran swiftly toward the level country, making 
a noise of watery haste ; also the wind was in the woods, with 
the noises of branches and leaves, but the only sounds he 
heard were the blows of the hammer on the boring-chisel, 
coming dull, and as if from afar, out of the depths of the 
earth. What a strange, awful significance they had to the 
heart of Faber ! But the end was delayed hour after hour, 
and there he still sat, now and then at a louder noise than 
usual lifting up a white face, and staring toward the mouth 
of the tunnel. At the explosion the water would probably 
rush in a torrent from the pit, and in half an hour, perhaps, 
the pond would be empty. But Polwarth had taken good 
care there should be no explosion that day. Ever again 
came the blow of iron upon iron, and the boring had begun 
afresh. 

Into her lovely chamber Dorothy had carried to Juliet the 
glad tidings that her husband was within a few hundred 
yards of the house, and that she might trust Mr. Polwarth to 
keep him there until all danger was over. 

Juliet now manifested far more courage than she had 
given reason to expect. It seemed as if her husband’s near- 
ness gave her strength to do without his presence. 

At length the child, a lovely boy, lay asleep in Dorothy’s 
arms. The lovelier mother also slept. Polwarth was on his 
way to stop the work, and let the doctor know that its com- 
pletion must be postponed for a few days, when he heard 
the voice of Lisbeth behind him, calling as she ran. He 
turned and met her, then turned again and ran, as fast as 
his little legs could carry him, to the doctor. 

** Mr. Faber,” he cried, “ there is a lady up there at the 
house, a friend of Miss Drake’s, taken suddenly ill. You 
are wanted as quickly as possible.” 

Faber answered not a word, but went with hasty strides 
up the bank, and ran to the house. Polwarth followed as 
fast as he could, panting and wheezing. Lisbeth received 
the doctor at the door. 

“ Tell my man to saddle my horse, and be at the back 
door immediately,” he said to her. 

Polwarth followed him up the stair to the landing, where 


PAUL FABER. 


383 

Dorothy received Faber, and led him to Juliet’s room. The 
dwarf seated himself on the top of the stair, almost within 
sight of the door. 


CHAPTER LIII. 

MY lady’s chamber. 

When Faber entered, a dim, rosy light from drawn win- 
dow-curtains filled the air ; he could see little more than his 
way to the bed. Dorothy was in terror lest the discovery he 
must presently make, should unnerve the husband for what 
might be required of the doctor. But Juliet kept her face 
turned aside, and a word from the nurse let him know at 
once what was necessary. He turned to Dorothy, and 
said, 

“ I must send my man home to fetch me something ; ” 
then to the nurse, and said, “ Go on as you are doing ; ” 
then once more to Dorothy, saying, “ Come with me. Miss 
Drake : I want writing things.” 

He led the way from the room, and Dorothy followed. 
But scarcely were they in the passage, when the little man 
rose and met them. Faber would have pushed past him, 
annoyed, but Polwarth held out a little phial to him. 

“ Perhaps that is what you want, sir,” he said. 

The doctor caught it hastily, almost angrily, from his hand, 
looked at it, uncorked it, and put it to his nose. 

“Thank you,” he said, “this is just what I wanted,” and 
returned instantly to the chamber. 

The little man resumed his patient seat on the side, 
breathing heavily. Ten minutes of utter silence followed. 
Then Dorothy passed him with a note in her hand, and hur- 
ried down the stair. The next instant Polwarth heard the 
sound of Niger’s hoofs tearing up the slope behind the 
house. 

“ 1 have got some more medicines here. Miss Drake,” he 
said, when she reappeared on the stair. 

As he spoke he brought out phial after phial, as if his 
pockets widened out below into the mysterious recesses of 
the earth to which as a gnome he belonged. Dorothy, 


384 


PAUL FABER. 


however, told him it was not a medicine the doctor wanted 
now, but something else, she did not know what. Her face 
was dreadfully white, but as calm as an ice field. She went 
back into the room, and Polwarth sat down again. 

Not more than twenty minutes had passed when he heard 
again the soft thunder of Niger’s hoofs upon the sward ; 
and in a minute more up came Lisbeth, carrying a little 
morocco case, which she left at the door of the room. 

Then an hour passed, during which he heard nothing. 
He sat motionless, and his troubled lungs grew quiet. 

Suddenly he heard Dorothy’s step behind him, and rose. 

“You had better come down stairs with me,” she said, in 
a voice he scarcely knew, and her face looked almost as if 
she had herself passed through a terrible illness. 

“ How is the poor lady ? ” he asked. 

“ The immediate danger is over, the doctor says, but he 
seems in great doubt. He has sent me away. Come with 
me : I want you to have a glass of wine.” 

“ Has he recognized her ? ” 

“ I do not know. I haven’t seen any sign of it yet. But 
the room is dark. — We can talk better below.” 

“ I am in want of nothing, my dear lady,” said Polwarth. 
“ I should much prefer staying here — if you will permit me. 
There is no knowing when I might be of service. I am far 
from unused to sick chambers.” 

“ Do as you please, Mr. Polwarth,” said Dorothy, and 
going down the stair, went into the garden. 

Once more Polwarth resumed his seat. 

There came the noise of a heavy fall, which shook him 
where he sat. He started up, went to the door of the 
chamber, listened a moment, heard a hurried step and the 
sweeping of garments, and making no more scruple, opened 
it and looked in. 

All was silent, and the room was so dark he could see 
nothing. Presently, however, he descried, in the middle of 
the floor, a prostrate figure that could only be the doctor, 
for plainly it was the nurse on her knees by him. He 
glanced toward the bed. There all was still. 

“ She is gone ! ” he thought with himself ; “ and the 
poor fellow has discovered who she was ! ” 

He went in. 

“ Have you no brandy ? ” he said to the nurse. 

“ On that table,” she answered. 

“ Lay his head down, and fetch it.” 


PAUL FABER. 


385 

Notwithstanding his appearance, the nurse obeyed : she 
knew the doctor required brandy, but had lost her presence 
of mind. 

Polwarth took his hand. The pulse had vanished — and 
no wonder ! Once more, utterly careless of himself, had the 
healer drained his own life-spring to supply that of his 
patient — knowing as little now what that patient was to him 
as he knew then what she was going to be. A thrill had 
indeed shot to his heart at the touch of her hand, scarcely 
alive as it was, when first he felt her pulse ; what he saw of 
her averted face through the folded shadows of pillows and 
curtains both of window and bed, woke wild suggestions ; 
as he bared her arm, he almost gave a cry : it was fortun- 
ate that there was not light enough to show the scar of his 
own lancet ; but, always at any critical moment self-pos- 
sessed to coldness, he schooled himself now with .sternest 
severity. He insisted to himself that he was in mortal 
danger of being fooled by his imagination — that a certain 
indelible imprint on his brain had begun to phosphoresce. 
If he did not banish the fancies crowding to overwhelm him, 
his patient's life, and probably his own reason as well, 
would be the penalty. Therefore, with will obstinately 
strained, he kept his eyes turned from the face of the 
woman, drawn to it as they were even by the terror of what 
his fancy might there show him, and held to his duty in 
spite of growing agony. His brain, he said to himself, was 
so fearfully excited, that he must not trust his senses : they 
would reflect from within, instead of transmitting from 
without. And victoriously did he rule, until, all the life he 
had in gift being exhausted, his brain, deserted by his 
heart, gave way, and when he turned from the bed, all but 
unconscious, he could only stagger a pace or two, and fell 
like one dead. 

Polwarth got some brandy into his mouth with a teaspoon. 
In about a minute, his heart began to beat. 

“ I must open another vein,” he murmured as if in a 
dream. 

When he had swallowed a third teaspoonful, he lifted his 
eyelids in a dreary kind of way, saw Polwarth, and remem- 
bered that he had something to attend to — a patient at the 
moment on his hands, probably — he could not tell. 

“ Tut ! give me a wine-glass of the stuff,” he said. 

Polwarth obeyed. The moment he swallowed it, he rose, 
rubbing his forehead as if trying to remember, and mechani- 


PAUL FABER. 


386 

cally turned toward the bed. The nurse, afraid he might 
not yet know what he was about, stepped between, saying 
softly, 

“ She is asleep, sir, and breathing quietly.” 

“ Thank God ! ” he whispered with a sigh, and turning 
to a couch, laid himself gently upon it. 

The nurse looked at Polwarth, as much as to say : “ Who 
is to take the command now ? ” 

“ I shall be outside, nurse : call me if I can be useful to 
you,” he replied to the glance, and withdrew to his watch 
on the top of the stair. 

After about a quarter of an hour, the nurse came out. 

“ Do you want me ? ” said Polwarth, rising hastily. 

“ No, sir,” she answered. “ The doctor says all immedi- 
ate danger is over, and he requires nobody with him. I am 
going to look after my baby. And please, sir, nobody is to 
go in, for he says she must not be disturbed. The slightest 
noise might spoil every thing : she must sleep now all she 
can.” 

“ Very well,” said Polwarth, and sat down again. 

The day went on ; the sun went down ; the shadows 
deepened ; and not a sound came from the room. Again 
and again Dorothy came and peeped up the stair, but seeing 
the little man at his post, like Zacchaeus up the sycamore, 
was satisfied, and withdrew. But at length Polwarth 
bethought him that Ruth would be anxious, and rose 
reluctantly. The same instant the door opened, and Faber 
appeared. He looked very pale and worn, almost haggard. 

“ Would you call Miss Drake ? ” he said. 

Polwarth went, and following Dorothy up the stair again, 
heard what Faber said. 

“ She is sleeping beautifully, but I dare not leave her. I 
must sit up with her to-night. Send my man to tell my 
assistant that I shall not be home. Could you let me have 
something to eat, and you take my place ? And there is 
Polwarth ! he has earned his dinner, if any one has. I do 
believe we owe the poor lady’s life to him.” 

Dorothy ran to give the message and her own orders. 
Polwarth begged she would tell the groom to say to Ruth 
as he passed that all was well ; and when the meal was 
ready, joined Faber. 

It was speedily over, for the doctor seemed anxious to be 
again with his patient. Then Dorothy went to Polwarth. 
Both were full of the same question : had Faber recognized 


PAUL FABER. 


387 

his wife or not ? Neither had come to a certain conclusion. 
Dorothy thought he had, but that he was too hard and 
proud to show it ; Polwarth thought he had not, but had 
been powerfully reminded of her. He had been talking 
strangely, he said, during their dinner, and had drunk a 
good deal of wine in a hurried way. 

Polwarth’s conclusion was correct : it was with an excite- 
ment almost insane, and a pleasure the more sorrowful that 
he was aware of its transientness, a pleasure now mingling, 
now alternating with utter despair, that Faber returned to 
sit in the darkened chamber, watching the woman who with 
such sweet torture reminded him of her whom he had lost. 
What a strange, unfathomable thing is the pleasure given 
us by a likeness ! It is one of the mysteries of our humanity. 
Now she had seemed more, now less like his Juliet; but all 
the time he could see her at best only very partially. Ever 
since his fall, his sight had been weak, especially in twilight, 
and even when, once or twice, he stood over her as she 
slept, and strained his eyes to their utmost, he could not 
tell what he saw. For, in the hope that, by the time it did 
come, its way would have been prepared by a host of fore- 
gone thoughts, Dorothy had schemed to delay as much as 
she could the discovery which she trusted in her heart must 
come at last; and had therefore contrived, not by drawn 
curtains merely, but by closed Venetian shutters as well, to 
darken the room greatly. And now he had no light but a 
small lamp, with a shade. 

He had taken a book with him, but it was little he read 
that night. At almost regular intervals he rose to see how 
his patient fared. She was still floating in the twilight 
shallows of death, whether softly drifting on the ebb-tide 
of sleep, out into the open sea, or, on its flow, again up the 
river of life, he could not yet tell. Once the nurse entered 
the room to see if any thing were wanted. Faber lifted his 
head, and motioned her angrily away, making no ghost of a 
sound. The night wore on, and still she slept. In his 
sleepless and bloodless brain strangest thoughts and feelings 
went and came. The scents of old roses, the stings of old 
sins, awoke and vanished, like the pulsing of fire-flies. But 
even now he was the watcher of his own moods ; and when 
among the rest the thought would come : “ What if this 
should be my own Juliet ! Do not time and place agree with 
the possibility ? ” and for a moment life seemed as if it would 
burst into the very madness of delight, ever and again his 


388 


PAUL FABER. 


common sense drove him to conclude that his imagination 
was fooling him. He dared not yield to the intoxicating 
idea. If he did, he would be like a man drinking poison, 
well knowing that every sip, in itself a delight, brought him 
a step nearer to agony and death ! When she should wake, 
and he let the light fall upon her face, he knew — so he said 
to himself — he knew the likeness would vanish in an appal- 
ling unlikeness, a mockery, a scoff of the whole night and 
its lovely dream — in a face which, if beautiful as that of an 
angel, not being Juliet’s would be to him ugly, unnatural, a 
discord with the music of his memory. Still the night was 
checkered with moments of silvery bliss, in the indulgence 
of the mere, the known fancy of what it would be if it were 
she, vanishing ever in the reviving rebuke, that he must 
nerve himself for the loss of that which the morning must 
dispel. Yet, like one in a dream, who knows it is but a 
dream; and scarce dares breathe lest he should break the 
mirrored ecstasy, he would not carry the lamp to the bed- 
side: no act of his should disperse the airy flicker of the 
lovely doubt, not a movement, not a nearer glance, until 
stern necessity should command. 

History knows well the tendency of things to repeat them- 
selves. Similar circumstances falling together must incline 
to the production of similar consequent events. 

Toward morning Juliet awoke from her long sleep, but 
she had the vessel of her brain too empty of the life of this 
world to recognize barely that which was presented to her 
bodily vision. Over the march of two worlds, that of her 
imagination, and that of fact, her soul hovered fluttering, 
and blended the presentment of the two in the power of its 
unity. 

The only thing she saw was the face of her husband, 
sadly lighted by the dimmed lamp. It was some distance 
away, near the middle of the room: it seemed to her miles 
away, yet near enough to be addressed. It was a more 
beautiful face now than ever before— than even then when 
first she took it for the face of the Son of Man — more 
beautiful, and more like Him, for it was more humane. 
Thin and pale with suffering, it was nowise feeble, but the 
former self-sufliciency had vanished, and a still sorrow had 
taken its place. 

He sat sunk in dim thought. A sound came that shook 
him as with an ague fit. Even then he mastered his emo- 
tion, and sat still as a stone. Or was it delight unmastered. 


PAUL FABER. 


389 


and awe indefinable, that paralyzed him? He dared not 
move lest he should break the spell. Were it fact, or were 
it but yet further phantom play on his senses, it should 
unfold itself ; not with a sigh would he jar the unfolding, 
but, ear only, listen to the end. In the utter stillness of the 
room, of the sleeping house, of the dark, embracing night, 
he lay in famished wait for every word. 

“ O Jesus,” said the voice, as of one struggling with 
weariness, or one who speaks her thoughts in a dream, 
imagining she reads from a book, a gentle, tired voice — 
“ O Jesus ! after all, Thou art there ! They told me Thou 
wast dead, and gone nowhere ! They said there never was 
such a One ! And there Thou art ! O Jesus, ^h3.t am I to 
do ? Art Thou going to do any thing with me ? — I wish I 
were a leper, or anything that Thou wouldst make clean ! 
But how couldst Thou, for I never quite believed in Thee, 
and never loved Thee before ? And there was my Paul ! 
oh, how I loved my Paul ! and he wouldn’t do it. I begged 
and begged him, for he was my husband when I was alive — 
I begged him to take me and make me clean, but he 
wouldn’t : he was too pure to pardon me. He let me lie in 
the dirt ! It was all right of him, but surely, Lord, Thou 
couldst afford to pity a poor girl that hardly knew what she 
was doing. My heart is very sore, and my whole body is 
ashamed, and I feel so stupid ! Do help me if Thou canst. 
I denied Thee, I know ; but then I cared for nothing but 
my husband ; and the denial of a silly girl could not hurt 
Thee, if indeed Thou art Lord of all worlds ! — I know Thou 
wnlt forgive me for that. But, O Christ, please, if Thou 
canst any way do it, make me fit for Paul. Tell him to 
beat me and forgive me. — O my Saviour, do not look at me 
so, or I shall forget Paul himself, and die weeping for joy. 
Oh, my Lord ! Oh, my Paul ! ” 

For Paul had gently risen from his chair, and come one 
step nearer — where he 'stood looking on her with such a 
smile as seldom has been upon human face — a smile of 
unutterable sorrow, love, repentance, hope. She gazed, 
speechless now, her spirit drinking in the vision of that 
smile. It was like mountain air, like water, like wine, like 
eternal life ! It was forgiveness and peace from the Lord 
of all. And had her brain been as clear as her heart, could 
she have taken it for less ? If the sinner forgave her, what 
did the Perfect ? 

Paul dared not go nearer — partly from dread of the con- 


390 


PAUL FABER. 


sequences of increased emotion. Her lips began to move 
again, and her voice to murmur, but he could distinguish 
only a word here and there. Slowly the eyelids fell over 
the great dark eyes, the words dissolved into syllables, the 
sounds ceased to be words at all, and vanished : her soul 
had slipped away into some silent dream. 

Then at length he approached on tiptoe. For a few 
moments he stood and gazed on the sleeping countenance — 
then dropped on his knees, and cried, 

“ God, if Thou be anywhere, I thank Thee.” 

Reader, who knowest better, do not mock him. Gently 
excuse him. His brain was excited ; there was a com- 
motion in the particles of human cauliflower ; a rush of 
chemical changes and interchanges was going on ; the 
tide was setting for the vasty deep of marvel, which was 
nowhere but within itself. And then he was in love with 
his wife, therefore open to deceptions wkhout end, for is 
not all love a longing after what never was and never can 
be ? 

He was beaten. But scorn him not for yielding. Think 
how he was beaten. Could he help it that the life in him 
proved too much for the death with which he had sided ? 
Was it poltroonery to desert the cause of ruin for that 
of growth ? of essential slavery for ordered freedom ? 
of disintegration for vital and enlarging unity ? He 
had “ said to corruption. Thou art my father : to the 
worm. Thou art my mother, and my sister ; ” but a Mightier 
than he, the Life that lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world, had said, “ O thou enemy, destruction shall have 
a perpetual end ; ” and he could not stand against the life 
by which he stood. When it comes to this, what can a man 
do ? Remember he was a created being — or, if you will not 
allow that, then something greatly less. If not “ loved into 
being ” by a perfect Will, in his own image of life and law, 
he had but a mother whom he never could see, because she 
could never behold either herself or hiir. : he was the off- 
spring of the dead, and must be pardoned if he gave a fool- 
ish cry after a parent worth having. 

Wait, thou whe countest such a cry a weak submission, 
until, having refused to take thine hour with thee, thine hour 
overtakes thee : then see if thou wilt stand out. Another’s 
battle is easy. God only knows with what earthquakes and 
thunders, that hour, on its way to find thee, may level the 
mountains and valleys between. If thou wouldst be per- 


PAUL FABER. 


391 


feet in the greatness of thy way, thou must learn to live in 
the fire of thy own divine nature turned against thy eon- 
seious self : learn to smile eontent in that, and thou wilt 
out-satan Satan in the putridity of essential meanness, yea, 
self-satisfied in very virtue of thy shame, thou wilt eount it 
the throned apotheosis of inbred honor. But seeming is not 
being — least of all self-seeming. Dishonor will yet be dis- 
honor, if all the fools in creation should be in love with it, 
and call it glory. 

In an hour, Juliet woke again, vaguely remembering a 
heavenly dream, whose odorous air yet lingered, and made 
her happy, she knew not why. Then what a task would 
have been Faber’s ! For he must not go near her. The 
balance of her life trembled on a knife-edge, and a touch 
might incline it toward death. A sob might determine the 
doubt. 

But as soon as he saw sign that her sleep was beginning 
to break, he all but extinguished the light, then having felt 
her pulse, listened to her breathing, and satisfied himself 
generally of her condition, crept from the room, and calling 
the nurse, told her to take his place. He would be either 
in the next room, he said, or within call in the park. 

He threw himself on the bed, but could not rest : rose 
and had a bath ; listened at Juliet’s door, and hearing no 
sound, went to the stable. Niger greeted him with a neigh 
of pleasure. He made haste to saddle him, his hands 
trembling so that he could hardly get the straps into the 
girth buckles. 

“ That’s Niger !” said Juliet, hearing his whinny. “Is 
he come ? ” 

“ Who, ma’am ? ” asked the nurse, a stranger to Glaston, 
of course. 

“ The doctor — is he come ? ” 

“ He’s but just gone, ma’am. He’s been sitting by you 
all night — would let no one else come near you. Rather 
peculiar, in my opinion ! ” 

A soft flush, all the blood she could show, tinged her 
cheek. It was Hope’s own color — the reflection of a red 
rose from a white. 


CHAPTER LIV. 


NOWHERE AND EVERYWHERE. 

Faber sprung upon Niger’s back, and galloped wildly 
through the park. His soul was like a southern sea under 
a summer tornado. The slow dawn was gathering under a 
smoky cloud with an edge of cold yellow ; a thin wind was 
abroad ; rain had fallen in the night, and the grass was wet 
and cool to Niger’s hoofs ; the earth sent up a savor, which 
like a soft warp was crossed by a woof of sweet odors from 
leaf-buds and wild flowers, and spangled here and there 
with a silver thread of bird song — for but few of the beast- 
angels were awake yet. Through the fine consorting mass 
of silence and odor, went the soft thunder ot Niger’s gallop 
over the turf. His master’s joy had overflowed into him : 
the creatures are not all stupid that can not speak ; some of 
them are with us more than we think. According to the 
grand old tale, God made his covenant with all the beasts 
that came out of the ark as well as with Noah ; for them also 
he set his bow of hope in the cloud of fear ; they are God’s 
creatures, God bless them ! and if not exactly human, are, I 
think, something more than humanisJi. Niger gave his soul 
with his legs to his master’s mood that morning. He was 
used to hard gallops with him across country, but this was 
different ; this was plainly a frolic, the first he had had 
since he came into his service ; and a frolic it should be ! 

A deeper, loftier, lovelier morning was dawning in Faber’s 
world unseen. One dread burden was lifted from his being ; 
his fierce pride, his unmanly cruelty, his spotless selfishness, 
had not hunted a woman soul quite into the moldy jaws 
of the grave ; she was given back to him, to tend, and heal, 
and love as he had never yet dreamed of loving ! Endless 
was the dawn that was breaking in him ; unutterably sweet 
the joy. Life was now to be lived — not endured. How he 
would nurse the lily he had bruised and broken ! From 
her own remorse he would shield her. He would be to her 
a summer land — a refuge from the wind, a covert from the 
tempest. He would be to her like that Saviour for whoni, 
in her wandering fancy, she had taken him : never more in 
vaguest thought would he turn from her. If, in any evil 
mood, a thought unkind should dare glance back at her past, 


PAUL FABER. 


393 


he would clasp her the closer to his heart, the more to be 
shielded that the shield itself was so poor. Once he laughed 
aloud as he rode, to find himself actually wondering whether 
the story of the resurrection could be true ; for what had 
the restoration of his Juliet in common with the out-worn 
superstition ? In any overwhelming joy, he concluded, the 
heart leans to lovely marvel. 

But there is as much of the reasonable as of to us the 
marvelous in that which alone has ever made credible 
proffer toward the filling of the gulf whence issue all the 
groans of humanity. Let Him be tested by the only test 
that can, on the supposition of His asserted nature, be 
applied to Him — that of obedience to the words He has 
spoken — words that commend themselves to every honest 
nature. Proof of other sort, if it could be granted, would, 
leaving our natures where they were, only sink us in condem- 
nation. 

Why should I pursue the story further ? and if not here, 
where better should I stop ? The true story has no end — no 
end. But endlessly dreary would the story be, were there 
no Life living by its own will, no perfect Will, one with an 
almighty heart, no Love in whom we live and move and 
have our being. Offer me an eternity in all things else after 
my own imagination, but without a perfect Father, and I 
say, no ; let me die, even as the unbelieving would have it. 
Not believing in the Father of Jesus, they are right in not 
desiring to live. Heartily do I justify them therein. For 
all this talk and disputation about immortality, wherein is 
regarded only the continuance of consciousness beyond what 
we call death, it is to me, with whatever splendor of intel- 
lectual coruscation it be accompanied, but little better than 
a foolish babble, the crackling of thorns under a pot. Apart 
from Himself, God forbid there should be any immortality. 
If it could be proved apart from Him, then apart from Him 
it could be, and would be infinite damnation. It is an 
impossibility, and were but an unmitigated evil. And if it be 
impossible without Him, it can not be believed without Him: 
if It could be proved without Him, the belief so gained would 
be an evil. Only with the knowledge of the Father of 
Christ, did the endlessness of being become a doctrine of 
bliss to men. If He be the first life, the Author of his own, 
to speak after the language of men, and the origin and 
source of all other life, it can be only by knowing Him that 
we can know whether we shall live or die. Nay more, far 


394 


PAUL FABER. 


more ! — the knowledge of Him by such innermost contact as 
is possible only between creator and created, and possible 
only when the created has aspired to be one with the will of 
the creator, such knowledge and such alone is life to the 
created ; it is the very life, that alone for the sake of which 
God created us. If we are one with God in heart, in right- 
eousness, in desire, no death can touch us, for we are life, 
and the garment of immortality, the endless length of days 
which is but the mere shadow of the eternal, follows as a 
simple necessity : He is not the God of the dead, or of the 
dying, but of the essentially alive. Without this inmost 
knowledge of Him, this oneness with Him, we have no life in 
us, for and that for the sake of which all this out- 

ward show of things, and our troubled condition in the midst 
of them, exists. All that is mighty, grand, harmonious, 
therefore in its own nature true, is. If not, then dearly I 
thank the grim Death, that I shall die and not live. Thus 
undeceived, my only terror would be that the unbelievers 
might be but half right, and there might be a life, so-called, 
beyond the grave without a God. 

My brother man, is the idea of a God too good or too 
foolish for thy belief ? or is it that thou art not great enough 
or humble enough to hold it ? In either case, I will believe 
it for thee and for me. Only be not stiff-necked when the 
truth begins to draw thee : thou wilt find it hard if she has 
to go behind and drive thee — hard to kick against the 
divine goads, which, be thou ever so mulish, will be too 
much for thee at last. Yea, the time will come when thou 
wilt goad thyself toward the divine. But hear me this once 
more : the God, the Jesus, in whom I believe, are not the 
God, the Jesus, in whom you fancy I believe : you know 
them not ; your idea of them is not mine. If you knew 
them you would believe in them, for to know them is to 
believe in them. Say not, Let Him teach me, then,” except 
you mean it in submissive desire ; for He has been teaching 
you all this time : if you have been doing His teaching, you 
are on the way to learn more ; if you hear and do not heed, 
where is the wonder that the things I tell you sound in your 
ears as the muttering of a dotard ? They convey to you 
nothing, it may be : but that which makes of them words — 
words — words, lies in you, not in me. Yours is the killing 
power. They would bring you life, but the death in him 
that knoweth and doeth not is strong ; in your air they drop 
and die, winged things no more. 


PAUL FABER. 


395 


For days Faber took measures not to be seen by Juliet. 
But he was constantly about the place, and when she woke 
from a sleep, they had often to tell her that he had been by 
her side all the time she slept. At night he was either in her 
room or in the next chamber. Dorothy used to say to her 
that if she wanted her husband, she had only to go to sleep. 
She was greatly tempted to pretend, but would not. 

At length Faber requested Dorothy to tell Juliet that the 
doctor said she might send for her husband when she 
pleased. Much as he longed to hear her voice, he would 
not come without her permission. 

He was by her side the next moment. But for minutes 
not a word was spoken ; a speechless embrace was all. 

It does not concern me to relate how by degrees they 
came to a close understanding. Where love is, everything 
is easy, or, if not easy, yet to be accomplished. Of course 
Faber made his return confession in full. I will not say that 
Juliet had not her respondent pangs of retrospective jealousy. 
Love, although an angel, has much to learn yet, and the 
demon Jealousy may be one of the school masters of her com- 
ing perfection : God only knows. There must be a divine 
way of casting out the demon ; else how would it be here- 
after ? 

Unconfessed to each other, their falls would forever have 
been between to part them ; confessed, they drew them 
together in sorrow and humility and mutual consoling. 

The little Amanda could not tell whether Juliet’s house or 
Dorothy’s was her home : when at the one, she always talked 
of the other as home. She called her father/^z/a, and Juliet 
mamma ; Dorothy had been auntie from the first. She always 
wrote her name, Amanda Duck Faber. From all this the 
gossips of Glaston explained every thing satisfactorily: Juliet 
had left her husband on discovering that he had a child of 
whose existence he had never told her ; but learning that 
the mother was dead, yielded at length, and was reconciled. 
That was the nearest they ever came to the facts, and it 
was not needful they should ever know more. The talkers 
of the world are not on the jury of the court of the universe. 
There are many, doubtless, who need the shame of a public 
exposure to make them recognize their own doing for what 
it is ; but of such Juliet had not been. Her husband knew 
her fault — that was enough : he knew also his own immeas- 
urably worse than hers, but when they folded each other to 
the heart, they left their faults outside — as God does, when 
He casts our sins behind His back, in utter uncreation. 


396 


PAUL FABER. 


I will say nothing definite as to the condition of mind at 
which Faber had arrived when last Wingfold and he had a 
talk together. He was growing, and that is all we can re- 
* quire of any man. He would not say he was a believer in 
the supernal, but he believed more than he said, and he never 
talked against belief. Also he went as often as he could to 
church, which, little as it means in general, did not mean 
little when the man was Paul Faber, and where the minister 
was Thomas Wingfold. 

It is time for the end. Here it is — in a little poem, which, 
on her next birthday, the curate gave Dorothy : 

O wind of God, that blowest in the mind, 

Blow, blow and wake the gentle spring in me ; 

Blow, swifter blow, a strong, warm summer wind, 

Till all the flowers with eyes come out to see ; 

Blow till the fruit hangs red on every tree. 

And our high-soaring song-larks meet thy dove — 

High the imperfect soars, descends the perfect Love. 

Blow not the less though winter cometh then ; 

Blow, wind of God, blow hither changes keen ; 

Let the spring creep into the ground again, 

The flowers close all their eyes, not to be seen ; 

All lives in thee that ever once hath been ; 

Blow, fill my upper air with icy storms ; 

Breathe cold, O wind of God, and kill my canker-worms 



























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